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2009-07-19 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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Israel rejects US call to halt Jerusalem project
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-- Israel on Sunday rejected a U.S. demand to suspend a planned housing project in east Jerusalem, threatening to further complicate an unusually tense standoff with its strongest ally over settlement construction.
Israeli officials said the country's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, was summoned to the State Department over the weekend and told that a project made up of 20 apartments developed by an American millionaire should not go ahead.
| So it comes down to this: we're ordering the Israelis around. And they just told us to stuff it. Smooth move, Bambi, smooth ... |
| They just told us to stuff it, again. They'd already nixed a complete halt on building in the settlements. |
Settlements built on captured lands claimed by the Palestinians have emerged as a major sticking point in relations between Israel and the Obama administration because of their potential to disrupt Mideast peacemaking.
Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently yielded to heavy U.S. pressure to endorse the establishment of a Palestinian state, he has resisted American demands for an immediate freeze on settlement expansion. On Sunday, Netanyahu told his Cabinet there would be no limits on Jewish construction anywhere in "unified Jerusalem."
"We cannot accept the fact that Jews wouldn't be entitled to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem," Netanyahu declared, calling Israeli sovereignty over the entire city "indisputable."
"I can only imagine what would happen if someone suggested Jews could not live in certain neighborhoods in New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly be a major international outcry," Netanyahu said.
Also at the Cabinet meeting, the head of Israel's Shin Bet internal security service, Yuval Diskin, said both the Western-backed administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the militant Islamic Hamas were carrying out "covert activity" in east Jerusalem to stop Jews acquiring property there. An official present at the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with Cabinet rules, did not elaborate on what the activity entailed but quoted Diskin as saying that hardline Egyptian cleric Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi earmarked $25 million to be funneled to Hamas activists in Jerusalem. Al-Qaradawi is a well-known terrorist figure in the Arab world and a regular on the satellite Al-Jazeera network. Diskin told the Cabinet that the money was to be used by Hamas to buy apartments and plots of land and "build charitable institutions to broaden its base in the city," the official said. Diskin did not provide evidence. Israel considers Hamas a terrorist group and bars it from operating in Jerusalem.
Abbas aide Rafiq Husseini dismissed the report. "We wish there was Arab money to buy threatened houses," he told The Associated Press, "but that's not the case." Qaradawi could no be reached for comment.
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| Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi | | |
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Posted by ed 2009-07-19 12:22||
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