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Israel pushes ahead with E. Jerusalem housing

Israel is pushing ahead with plans to build 1,300 new apartments for Jewish families in Arab East Jerusalem, the Interior Ministry said on Monday, despite fierce opposition from Palestinians.
Image:
A Palestinian woman walks nearby the Jewish neighborhood of Har Homa in east Jerusalem, on Monday. The Israeli government is moving ahead with plans to build nearly 1,300 apartments in disputed east Jerusalem, an official said Monday, a move sure to escalate frictions between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American officials during his current visit to the United States. Tara Todras-whitehill / AP
/ Source: msnbc.com news services

Israel is pushing ahead with plans to build 1,300 new apartments for Jewish families in Arab East Jerusalem, the Interior Ministry said on Monday, despite fierce opposition from Palestinians.

The timing of the announcement could prove an embarrassment for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in the United States looking for ways to revive Middle East peace talks that have stalled over the issue of Jewish settlement building.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said plans for some 1,300 Jewish housing units in two neighborhoods on land Israel seized in a 1967 war had been made public, passing another procedural stage toward eventual construction.

She said the public could still raise objections to the plans and it could take a long time before building commenced.

"It can take months or years from this point until building can actually begin, or even before tenders for building are issued," Orbach said.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said regardless of when the building actually takes place, the latest Israeli move was a sign of bad faith.

He said the Palestinians had hoped Netanyahu had gone to the U.S. "to make a choice for peace and not settlements."

"Unfortunately, once again, when given the choice, he chooses settlements," Erekat said. "We hold him fully responsible for the collapse of these negotiations."

News of this latest planning move came shortly after Netanyahu met U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on the sidelines of a Jewish conference in New Orleans.

When Biden visited Israel in March, the Interior Ministry announced a plan to build 1,600 homes for Jews in an area of the West Bank that Palestinians want for a future state, seriously straining relations between Israel and the United States.

Netanyahu said at the time he had no prior knowledge of the announcement and it was not clear if his office was aware of the latest move during his visit to the United States, which said it was "deeply disappointed" by the latest news.

'Counterproductive'
"It is counterproductive to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, adding that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was expected to bring the matter up in a meeting with Netanyahu in New York on Thursday.

An aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ruled out any return to negotiations as long as Israel continued to build and called on the United States to act against the Jewish state so that the talks could restart.

"Israel is continuing to create obstacles ... There will be no return to negotiations while Israel pursues settlement activities," Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters.

"(Netanyahu) is giving a signal to the Americans that (Israel) will not agree to halt settlements ... We demand that the U.S. administration take practical steps to resume the peace process, there will not be a peace treaty without having East Jerusalem as the capital of (the) state of Palestine," he added.

The State Department's Crowley said the United States was seeking to understand the background to the announcement, and said "it could very well be that somebody in Israel has made this known in order to embarrass the prime minister and to undermine the process."

"This is expressly why we have been encouraging the parties to remain in direct negotiations, to return to direct negotiations and to work through these issues face-to-face," he told a news briefing.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank, in 1967 and regards all of Jerusalem as its capital. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Direct peace talks between the two sides broke down in September almost as soon as they had begun, after Israel refused to accept Palestinian demands that it extend a partial freeze on West Bank settlement building. The freeze did not include construction work in areas Israel considers part of Jerusalem.