Washington’s Middle East peace envoy delayed his trip to the region as Israeli officials remained defiant yesterday over their plans to build more settlements in disputed east Jerusalem amid deepening feud between US and Israel.
Dozens of masked Palestinians also hurled rocks at police and set tires ablaze across Jeruslam’s volatile eastern sector, where thousands of officers, including reinforcements brought in from other locations, were in place for a fifth straight day. Police said seven have been arrested so far.
The diplomatic crisis erupted last week after Israel announced during a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden that it would build 1,600 apartments for Jews in east Jerusalem, the area the Palestinians claim for a future capital.
PHOTO: AFP
The announcement enraged Palestinians, who have threatened to bow out of US-brokered peace talks that were supposed to have begun in the coming days. The Obama administration, fuming over what it called the “insulting” Israeli conduct, demanded that Israel call off the contentious project.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio that demands to halt Israeli construction there “are unreasonable as far as we are concerned.” He predicted that the diplomatic row with the US would blow over, saying neither side had an interest in escalation.
But Washington notified Israel early yesterday that envoy George Mitchell had put off his trip. The visit will be rescheduled at an undetermined time, officials on both sides said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apologized for the timing of the project’s approval, but he has not said it would be canceled. On Monday, he defended four decades of Jewish construction in east Jerusalem and said it “in no way” hurts Palestinians.
Palestinians, who number about 250,000 in east Jerusalem, see the building of new settlements and the presence of some 180,000 Jews there as a grave challenge to their claims to the territory.
About 3,000 Israeli police officers were deployed in the east Jerusalem area yesterday, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Early yesterday, masked Palestinians hurled rocks at Israeli police and burned tires in multiple areas. Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police fired stun grenades to disperse dozens of protesters at one site, while village elders helped to end protests at another. No injuries were reported in those disturbances.
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