JERUSALEM // The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday defied criticism from the US and European Union over plans for 1,000 new settler homes in east Jerusalem, saying: “We have built in Jerusalem, we are building in Jerusalem, and we will continue to build in Jerusalem”.
Diplomats said the Palestinian Authority and Jordan have requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the Israeli plans.
“I have heard charges that building in Jerusalem’s Jewish neighbourhoods brings us further from peace,” Mr Netanyahu said. “These statements are detached from reality, they are falsehoods that thrive among the Palestinians.”
Israel’s top allies didn’t see it that way.
“We view settlement activity as illegitimate and unequivocally oppose unilateral steps that prejudge the future of Jerusalem,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Washington on Monday. “Israel’s leaders have said they support a two-state solution, but moving forward with this kind of action would be incompatible with the pursuit of peace.”
The Jerusalem building plan is “ill-timed and ill- judged,” Maja Kocijancici, a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said in Brussels. “We stress that the future development of relations between the EU and Israel will depend on engagement towards a lasting peace based on a two-state solution,” she said.
Already Strained
Israel’s ties with the US, already strained by previous settlement announcements and differences over Iran policy, are further fraying at a time when the Netanyahu government is counting on US support to block Palestinian efforts to promote its statehood efforts at the United Nations and other international forums.
Mr Netanyahu’s move to speed up the Jerusalem construction plans is meant “to appease his internal coalition opposition on the right,” which is pushing to build in east Jerusalem, said Yehuda Ben Meir, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
“The problem now with the timing is the fact that we are in the middle of a crisis in the American-Israeli relationship,” said Mr Ben Meir, a former deputy foreign minister, “and this crisis needs to be dealt with, and not exacerbated.”
European Support
The Palestinians, meanwhile, have drawn more support in Europe for their statehood campaign, with Sweden saying it will soon formally recognise a Palestinian state and Britain’s parliament casting a symbolic vote of recognition.
The Palestinians have also called on UN Security General Ban Ki-moon to hold an emergency Security Council meeting this week on the status of Jerusalem.
Arab neighbourhoods of the city have been roiled by unrest for months, with some residents hurling stones and firebombs at police and vehicles driven by Jewish residents. The violence turned deadly last week after a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem drove his car into a crowd waiting at a light-rail station, killing two people.
Palestinian leaders say the unrest is being driven by the failure of peace efforts, Jewish settlement of homes in Arab neighbourhoods, and efforts to allow Jewish prayer at a contested holy site. About 300,000 Palestinians live in east Jerusalem, which Israel seized from Jordan along with the West Bank in 1967. More than half a million Jews live in the city.
Mr Netanyahu has said that Israel, which annexed east Jerusalem in a move that isn’t internationally recognised, won’t share sovereignty over the city with the Palestinians.
* with reporting by Bloomberg
