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Netanyahu Expedites Plan for 1,000 New Homes in East Jerusalem Netanyahu Expedites Plan for 1,000 New Homes in East Jerusalem
(about 5 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday expedited planning for more than 1,000 new apartments in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, a move certain to ignite international outrage as well as to exacerbate fissures in Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition. JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that Israel would fast-track planning for more 1,060 new apartments in populous Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, a move that appears calibrated to appeal to the maximum number of Israelis while causing the minimum damage to Israel internationally, according to Israeli analysts.
The announcement, along with a parallel push for new roads and other infrastructure projects in the occupied West Bank, came amid escalating protests and violence by Palestinian residents of Jerusalem that many see as the stirrings of a third intifada, or uprising. But as is often the case, Mr. Netanyahu’s decision prompted swift international condemnation at a time when Israel’s relations with Washington are already strained and risked further igniting Palestinian ire and tensions in Jerusalem. It was also unlikely to satisfy the right-wing political rivals it was intended to appease, the analysts said.
Right-wing Israeli ministers have been pressuring Mr. Netanyahu to speed construction in what most of the world considers illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. But moderates in the government have said this would only deepen Israel’s isolation. Right-wing ministers have been pressuring Mr. Netanyahu to speed construction in what most of the world considers illegal settlements in the West Bank. Naftali Bennett of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party had threatened to destabilize the government coalition, accusing Mr. Netanyahu of carrying out a quiet building freeze despite many announcements about the advancement of plans.
“The prime minister wants to demonstrate his commitment to Jerusalem,” a senior Israeli official said when asked why the announcement was being made at such a delicate time. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do otherwise. Unlike more far-flung settlements in the West Bank, building in East Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the 1967 lines enjoys wide support among Israeli politicians and the public, given the broad consensus in the country that these are areas Israel is likely to keep under any permanent deal with the Palestinians. Analysts note that the parameters for a two-state solution outlined by President Bill Clinton in 2000 envisioned granting Israel sovereignty over Jewish areas in Jerusalem and the Palestinians sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods, though it is not clear if that allowed for enlarging those Jewish areas over time.
The move concerned about 600 new apartments in Ramat Shlomo, where a similar announcement during a visit to Jerusalem by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2010 contributed to a crisis in Israel’s relations with Washington, and 400 in Har Homa, whose construction in the 1990s led to international protests. “Netanyahu apparently has coalition problems and thought let’s throw them a bone in Jerusalem, which is easier to explain in the world and to the United States,” said Yehuda Ben Meir, an expert at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Both areas are in territory Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and later annexed: Ramat Shlomo near Jerusalem’s northern border and Har Homa in the south. “But you have to see it in the context of the crisis with the United States, the continuous erosion, which is very serious and very dangerous for Israel,” he added.
“We believe such unilateral acts will lead to an explosion,” Jibril Rajoub, a leader of the Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, told foreign journalists on Monday at a briefing in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “Mr. Netanyahu should not expect a white flag from the Palestinian people.” Washington said it was “deeply concerned” by the reports on Monday.
“Drastic demographic changes in East Jerusalem,” Mr. Rajoub said, “this is the most provocative act for us as Palestinians, as Muslims, as Christians, as Arabs.” “If Israel wants to live in a peaceful society, they need to take steps that will reduce tensions,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, told reporters in a briefing. “Moving forward with this sort of action would be incompatible with the pursuit of peace.”
East Jerusalem, which Palestinians envision as the capital of a future state, has been simmering with tension since the abduction and killing of a 16-year-old Palestinian in July, apparently in retaliation for the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers the month before. The United States has consistently condemned unilateral steps that could prejudice the outcome of negotiations over East Jerusalem, which Israel conquered from Jordan in the 1967 war then annexed in a move that was never internationally recognized.
Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday announced the addition of 1,000 officers to bolster a police crackdown against stone-throwing and other violence, which have increased since a Palestinian driver plowed into a group of pedestrians near a light-rail station last week, killing a baby and a young woman. Palestinian officials say that Mr. Netanyahu has refused to outline the borders of a future Palestinian state or the size of the areas Israel intends to keep, or to commit publicly to land swaps to compensate the Palestinians for any adjustments to the 1967 boundary.
On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu told his security team that he wanted to quickly enact a bill mandating “harsh punishment” for stone-throwers, according to a statement from his office. The proposed law would fine the parents of minors who were arrested for such acts. “We believe such unilateral acts will lead to an explosion,” Jibril Rajoub, a senior figure in Fatah, the mainstream party led by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, said on Monday. Briefing foreign journalists in the West Bank city of Ramallah he added, “Mr. Netanyahu should not expect a white flag from the Palestinian people.”
The Israeli news media reported Sunday night that Mr. Netanyahu had promised to increase West Bank construction at a meeting last week with leaders of the settlement movement and Naftali Bennett, the leader of the nationalist party Jewish Home who has threatened to leave the coalition over the issue. The Palestinian leadership is seeking a Security Council resolution calling for an end of the Israeli occupation within two years. Mr. Rajoub, who called the right-wing Israeli ministers “hooligans” and “racist gangsters,” said the leadership had also decided to join the International Criminal Court “at the right time,” a development he said could take place in “a matter of weeks.”
Tzipi Livni, the centrist justice minister who led Israel’s participation in the American-brokered negotiations with the Palestinians that collapsed in April, responded critically on Sunday to those reports. Such building plans, she wrote on Facebook, “in our volatile reality are irresponsible both in terms of security and diplomacy.” Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Mr. Abbas and the veteran chief Palestinian negotiator, said in a statement, “This announcement amounts to evidence of an intent to further commit crimes defined by and punishable under international law.”
Yair Lapid, the finance minister who has said his Yesh Atid party will quit Mr. Netanyahu’s government if the peace process with the Palestinians is not revived, said the timing would be harmful to Israel. The move announcement concerned about 600 new apartments in Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood where a similar announcement during a visit to Jerusalem by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2010 contributed to a crisis in Israel’s relations with Washington. It also involves 400 units in Har Homa, in the southeast, whose construction in the 1990s led to international protests. The Israeli prime minister’s office also said there would be a parallel push for new roads and other infrastructure projects in the occupied West Bank.
“This plan will lead to a serious crisis in Israel-U.S. relations and will harm Israel’s standing in the world,” Mr. Lapid said in a statement on Sunday night. Mr. Bennett and his supporters in the settlement movement had been hoping for housing construction there, not just roads and planning procedures.
“We will fight against this,” he said on Monday. Data issued by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics indicated that West Bank housing starts dropped by 72 percent in the first half of 2014 compared with the same period the year before, when the building rate was unusually high.
The senior Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity tried to play down the significance of the move on Monday. “We’re not talking about building, we’re talking about planning,” he said. “Infrastructure is welcome, but it cannot come in place of housing units,” Gershon Mesika, the chairman of the settlers’ Samaria Council in the northern West Bank, told Israel Radio. “I very much hope that this spin becomes reality,” he added.
He added that the roads planned for the West Bank, where about 500,000 Jews live in settlements among 2.5 million Palestinians, were “roads, of course, that will be used by the Palestinians as well.” Davidi Perl, chairman of the Etzion Bloc Regional Council, said, “There have been a lot of declarations, we want to see action. At the moment, there is nothing on the ground.”
“Planning units in Jerusalem is something that I believe the overwhelming majority of Israelis support,” the official said. “In every peace plan that’s been on the table, the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem remain in Israel.” Moderates in Mr. Netanyahu’s government say new building plans will only deepen Israel’s isolation.
But Palestinians and international critics of Israel’s policy say that any settlement activity makes the prospect of peace even more elusive, particularly as Mr. Netanyahu has not made a clear statement differentiating his approach to these so-called settlement blocs and farther flung, more controversial areas of the West Bank. “We are in a crisis with the Americans,” Yair Lapid, the centrist finance minister, told the Ynet Hebrew news site on Monday. “We have to act like someone in crisis.”
Similar announcements of even small, bureaucratic steps in the lengthy construction process have drawn condemnation from the State Department in Washington, the European Union and the United Nations, as well as from Palestinian leaders. Defending his position in an address to the Parliament, Mr. Netanyahu said all Israeli governments over the last 50 years had built in Jerusalem and the settlement blocs and rejected charges that it would heat up the atmosphere. “To several elements in the region our very existence is what heats up the atmosphere,” he said. “So shall we cease to exist?”
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, strongly condemned the announcement in a statement on Monday. Gadi Wolfsfeld, a professor of political communications at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, said of Mr. Netanyahu, “The truth is he is not really nervous about America or the world anymore because until now nobody has done anything.”
He noted it followed recent moves by Jewish settlers into roughly three dozen apartments in Silwan, a predominantly Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, and coincided with the introduction of legislation to allow Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. (Mr. Netanyahu has reiterated in recent days his opposition to any change in rules for the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and home of Al Aksa Mosque, the site of frequent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces.) While people speak of Mr. Netanyahu’s actions in terms of political survival, Prof. Wolfsfeld said, “I never think we should be too cynical about his ideology, which includes holding on to Jerusalem forever.”
“The international community must take decisive action in order to save the two-state solution from the colonial expansion of the state of Israel,” Mr. Erekat said in the statement. “This announcement amounts to evidence of an intent to further commit crimes defined by and punishable under international law.” Though the government has not provided details Ir Amim, an organization that opposes settlement expansion and supports an equitable solution for Jerusalem, said the latest plan for Ramat Shlomo appeared to correspond to one that was last discussed in 2006 and the one for Har Homa appeared to have lain dormant since 2009.
“All these plans are politically loaded and can be a stop-and-go process,” said Betty Herschman of Ir Amim. They can be sped up for political reasons, slowed down for diplomatic reasons, or determined by market forces.
The 1,600 Ramat Shlomo apartments that were announced during Mr. Biden’s visit in 2010 have still not been built. The plans were approved in December 2012 and bids were published for 987 of the housing units during this year, of which 387 have been won by contractors, according to Ir Amim. A district committee was due to meet on Tuesday to hurry that process as well.