Jerusalem – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday brushed off world condemnation of Israel’s plans to expand Jewish settlements after the Palestinians won de facto U.N. recognition of statehood.
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“We will carry on building in Jerusalem and in all the places that are on the map of Israel’s strategic interests,” a defiant Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting.
In another blow to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, Israel also announced it was withholding Palestinian tax revenues this month worth about $100 million because of a $200 million PA debt to the Israeli Electric Corporation.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official, said confiscation of the funds due the cash-strapped Authority and vital to meeting its payroll, was “piracy and theft”.
Stung by the U.N. General Assembly’s upgrading on Thursday of the Palestinians’ status from “observer entity” to “non-member state”, Israel said on Friday it would build 3,000 more settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Palestinians want for a future state, along with Gaza.
An Israeli official said the government also ordered “preliminary zoning and planning work” for thousands of housing units in areas including the so-called “E1” zone near Jerusalem.
Such construction could divide the West Bank in two and further dim Palestinian hopes, backed by the United States and other international sponsors of the Middle East peace process, for a contiguous country.
But Israeli officials said it could up to two years before any building begins in E1.
At the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the “unilateral step the Palestinians took at the U.N. is a gross violation of previous agreements signed with Israel”. The government of Israel, he added, “rejects the General Assembly’s vote”.
The upgrade, approved overwhelmingly, fell short of full U.N. membership, which only the Security Council can grant. But it has significant legal implications because it could allow the Palestinians access to the International Criminal Court where they could file complaints against Israel.
Israel’s settlement plans, widely seen as retaliation for the Palestinians’ U.N. bid, have drawn strong international condemnation from the United States, France, Britain and the European Union.
“The recognition of Palestine as a state changes a lot of the facts, and aims to establish new ones,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told a cheering crowd in the West Bank city of Ramallah on his return from the United States.
“But we have to recognize that our victory provoked the powers of settlement, war and occupation.”
INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM
Netanyahu heads a pro-settler government and opinion polls predict his Likud party will come out on top in Israel’s January 22 parliamentary election, despite opponents’ allegations that his policies have deepened Israeli diplomatic isolation.
“All settlement construction is illegal under international law and constitutes an obstacle to peace,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement on Sunday.
The United States said the plan was counterproductive to any resumption of direct peace talks, stalled for two years in a dispute over settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both captured by Israel in a 1967 war.
Netanyahu says Israel, as a Jewish state, has a historic claim to land in the West Bank and to all of Jerusalem. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. Israel considers all of the holy city as its capital, a claim that is not recognized internationally.
Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Attias said that within weeks the government would publish invitations for bids from contractors to build 1,000 homes in East Jerusalem and more than 1,000 in West Bank settlement blocs.
“E1 is in planning, which means sketches on paper,” Attias told Army Radio. “No one will build until it is clear what will be done there.”
The E1 zone is considered especially sensitive. Israel froze much of its activities in E1 under pressure from former U.S. President George W. Bush and the area has been under the scrutiny of his successor Barack Obama.
Benny Kashriel, mayor of the Maale Adumim settlement adjacent to E1, told Army Radio building “will take a year or two”.
Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said: “If we build in E1 the two-state vision will truly be history … it is a strategic point that if built, will prevent the Palestinians from having a normal state.”
Approximately 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
They should finally tell the world where to go. Let the world that voted to make a non-entity to a state pay for their gas bill. No more Israeli Doctors treating Palestinians for free.
Israel should ignore the international condemnation with more building in the west bank.
Good.
He’s finally growing some.
The world is going to hate Israel no matter what they do so might as well do what you want.
What the hell is he doing??
He’s basically telling the Palestinians in the west bank that peaceful means of achieving statehood won’t either work so you might as well resort to violence.
And of course the Hussein/Hillary administration condemns the action.
And the Jews who backed this beheyma still defend their action. Will it take another Holocaust for you to realize what harm you’ve done to Israel, the USA and the world?
The bottom line is that Netanyahu can’t have it both ways: He can’t kep saying he supports a two-state solution with land compromises while at the same time building on the very lands that would be part of any negotiated settlement. This makes Israelis look like liars and hypocrites.
Never Again.
Way to go!
Hatzlocha!
And if the west bank and gaza arabs had not gotten the UN to grant their little “state,” then Israel would not have had a right to build on its land?
Is that the lesson of this particular irrelevant and meaningless tantrum?
What a shame, the only group in the world that support radicals idealistic settlers movement are us “no-zionists” (except satmar), even the modern orthodox understand that for the sake of the state of Israel we need to give up something, but we chasidim/litvish ( AKA ultra orthodox) we get all excited when bibi passes a law against peace or against Palestinians.
I’m ashamed with my community
Does the PA also owe money to the hospitals also??
The sad truth is that Israel never comes out on top. The world does not want to see and accept what the Palestinians are like. I wonder what will happen when they are the ones being attacked by the Arab world? Will they ask Israel to help them? It seems that no one has learned from the September 11th attacks that took place.
Let’s see. $100 million a month in tax revenues. Who thinks an arab in the West Bank would move to an arab counmtry for $100,000. That means if they used this tax money to pay arabs to leave they could get a thousand a month to move elsewhere. I know, as they move out the tax revenues will go down. But think about a west bank where the only ones left are the 1,000 who are actually grabbing all the money the EU is throwing at them. In the end, even the EU and the UN will have a hard time taking them seriously. Of course the payments to those who move need to be staggered so they keep their word.
Please remember that Hamas also owes the Hospitals money!!