ISRAELI PRIME minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in defiant mood, yesterday vowed that the building of Jewish neighbourhoods in disputed east Jerusalem will continue.
Mr Netanyahu said: “Construction in Jerusalem will continue in any part of the city as it has during the last 42 years [since Israel captured the West Bank, including east Jerusalem].
“In the past 40 years, there was no government that limited construction in any Jerusalem area or neighbourhood,” Mr Netanyahu told his Likud party parliamentary faction. “Establishing Jewish neighbourhoods did not hurt Jerusalem’s Arab residents and was not at their expense.”
He stressed that there was a near total Israeli consensus that Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem should remain part of Israel.
Mr Netanyahu’s comments follow last week’s controversial approval of 1,600 new homes for the ultra-orthodox neighbourhood of Ramat Shlomo, a decision that coincided with the visit to Israel of US vice-president Joe Biden.
Both the US and the European Union have demanded that Israel cancel the planned construction, and US envoy George Mitchell was reportedly considering delaying his planned return to the region this week.
Palestinian leaders have warned that the move undermines the indirect peace talks that have still to get under way.
Israeli media quoted Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, as saying the crisis in relations with the US was the worst since 1973 when Yitzhak Rabin, in his first term as prime minister, refused US demands for an Israeli troop withdrawal from the Sinai, captured from Egypt.
Mr Oren, who was summoned over the weekend to the US state department and reprimanded over the construction plans, was quoted as telling a conference call with Israeli consuls general in the US that “the crisis was very serious and we are facing a very difficult period in bilateral relations”.
EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, who arrives in Israel tomorrow, told Arab League representatives in Cairo yesterday that the Israeli move had “endangered and undermined the tentative agreement to begin proximity talks”. She added: “The EU position on settlements is clear. Settlements are illegal, constitute an obstacle to peace, and threaten to make a two state-solution impossible.”
She said the EU was ready to step up its involvement in the Middle East peace process.
Egypt’s foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Israel’s actions in Jerusalem are “absurd, an evasion, manoeuvring and an attempt to suffocate the Palestinians.”
The Palestinian Authority, following a cabinet meeting in Ramallah, urged the international community to intervene to prevent Israeli settlement construction. PLO executive committee member Ahmed Qureia warned that if Israel continues with its building activities and with razing homes in Jerusalem, another intifada uprising will break out.
Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak, whose Labor party is part of the government coalition, said measures should be taken to end the crisis and get the proximity talks back on track.
Hundreds of Israeli police deployed in Jerusalem yesterday as Jewish worshippers attended the dedication ceremony of the rebuilt Hurva synagogue in the old city’s Jewish quarter.