Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert himself approved the construction of nearly 900 new houses in occupied east Jerusalem, the country’s housing minister said yesterday.
The building projects announced two days ago have enraged the Palestinians, who want east Jerusalem as their capital and have called the expansion of Jewish settlements the greatest obstacle to reaching a peace agreement.
“The prime minister was informed and he gave his authorization for the construction of the houses,” Israeli Housing Minister Zeev Boim told public radio.
The decision goes against repeated calls from Washington for Israel to halt settlement projects as part of US-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians and comes as Olmert was due in Washington on an official visit.
NEGOTIATIONS
“We don’t believe that any more settlements should be built. And we know that it exacerbates the tensions when it comes to the negotiations with the Palestinians,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said on Monday.
Boim shrugged off the US opposition.
“There is nothing new in this position. For 41 years we have differed with the United States, the UN and the Palestinians,” Boim said.
Israel occupied and annexed mostly Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and now considers the whole city its “eternal, undivided” capital.
That claim is not recognized by any other country or by the Palestinians, who have demanded that east Jerusalem be the capital of their future state in peace talks formally relaunched in November in the US city of Annapolis.
NO NEW HOMES
“Israel must adhere to what it agreed to at Annapolis to stop all settlement activity,” senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told reporters after a meeting between Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday.
“We want to reach a peace agreement before the end of 2008 but there is this continuing Israeli contradiction between pursuing the peace process and imposing facts on the ground,” Erakat said.
A day before the talks, the housing ministry said it was calling for bids for the construction of 884 houses in the massive Pisgat Zeev neighborhood in north Jerusalem and Har Homa on the outskirts of the city.
Israel insists it has the right to build in both areas because it expects to be given the land in any future peace deal.
The Palestinian population of east Jerusalem currently stands at nearly 260,000, the Palestinian Authority said, with the settler population at nearly 200,000, Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said.
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