Israel is coming under growing international pressure following its approval of new housing for Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem.

Britain, France, the EU and the Arab League have all added their protests against the decision.

The housing row has overshadowed a visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden which is meant to promote a new round of US-led negotiations.

He has condemned the move, saying it undermined trust in the peace process.

Israel and the Palestinians had agreed to hold indirect “proximity talks” in a bid to restart the process, which has been stalled for 17 months.

But earlier this week it approved 1,600 new homes for ultra-Orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem.

The international community considers East Jerusalem occupied territory and building on occupied land is illegal under international law.

Israel regards East Jerusalem – which it annexed in 1967 – as its territory, but Palestinians want it as the capital of their future state.

‘Ill-timed’

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband described the Israeli move as “a bad decision at the wrong time”.

“It will give strength to those who argue that Israel is not serious about peace,” he said.

“Along with our EU partners, I condemn it as certain to undermine the mutual confidence we need.”

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said the decision was “completely ill-timed”.

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Israel under pressure over East Jerusalem homes

About 5,000 left-wing activists and Palestinians gathered Saturday to protest the eviction of four Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Protesters carried Palestinian flags and chanted “Stop the destruction of homes” and “There is no sanctity in an occupied city.”

Despite the heavy police presence, the demonstration has remained peaceful.

For the past six months, a group of independent left-wing activists have demonstrated every Friday in the East Jerusalem neighborhood, protesting the takeover of Palestinian homes by groups of Israeli settlers.

Last week, the demonstrators asked Jerusalem police for permission to hold a large rally in the street leading to a contested house, to protest against the settlers and show solidarity with the Palestinian residents of the neighborhood.

The police refused to authorize the rally and instead approved a much smaller gathering at a soccer field situated 300 meters from the home. The demonstrators said that the field is surrounded by a wall, it cannot be seen from the outside and is entirely cut off from the area near the contested home, which is the main focus of the protest.

Supreme Court justices were highly critical of the Jerusalem police decision this week after they refused the request by demonstrators.

“The police are taking the right to demonstrate 30 years backward,” Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch said during deliberations.

The justices ruled that 300 demonstrators would be allowed to approach the contested house at the conclusion of the rally.

Jerusalem District police commander, Aharon Franko, was asked to appear before the justices and said that the the contested house is in “one of the most explosive locations.” He explained that “not a day goes by when there are not confrontations, fighting and stone throwing.”

Police said that closing off the street, as the demonstrators would like, would make it difficult for worshippers to make their way to the nearby tomb of Simon the Just (Shimon HaTzadik).

At the start of Saturday’s rally, Palestinian director and playwright Samih Jabarin criticized demonstrators who arrived at the rally carrying Israeli flags with the word “peace” on them, saying the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one bi-national state.

However, one of the rally’s organizers said, “It is important to clarify that we have people of all stripes here, supporters of a bi-national state and supporters of two states for two peoples. But we are all united against the ‘Judaization’ of East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians, who want to make East Jerusalem the capital of a future state, say the property belongs to them.

Some 200 right wing activists held a counter demonstration nearby, although police managed to keep the peace between the two groups of protesters, Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Earlier Saturday, three men were injured in clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank village of Burin.

The clashes erupted when soldiers stopped a group of Palestinians trying to approach a Jewish settlement, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

Palestinians residents said the settlers were trying to bathe in a water cistern in their village.

Palestinians hurled rocks at the soldiers who responded with tear gas and rubber-coated steel pellets.

Tensions have been high in the West Bank since Israel declared last month it would add two contested shrines there to its national heritage list.
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Thousands of protesters rally against Jewish presence in E. Jerusalem

WASHINGTON, March 1 (Xinhua) — The United States on Monday criticized the Israeli government for planning to build more Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, saying the move undermines Washington’s efforts for the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

The United States has “relayed our strong concerns” to the government of Israel, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters, adding that the settlement activities are “counter- productive” and undermine “trust between the parties.”

The Israeli government has reportedly approved 600 new homes, 500 less than a previous plan set in the past year, for the East Jerusalem settlements Pisgat Ze’ev.

“…we understand the total number of units has been reduced from the original plans we also understand that this is not a final approval for the project but as a step in that direction,” Crowley noted.

The Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967 and later annexed, are considered by the international community as Israeli settlements and one of the main obstacles to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem has not been internationally recognized, and the Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a 10-month freeze on construction in the West Bank settlements last October. However, Netanyahu stressed that the construction limits would not be implemented in the predominantly Arab East Jerusalem.

The Obama administration has been tired of pushing the Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to relaunch the long-stalled peace talks.

PNA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas insists that the talks should not resume until the Israeli government totally freezes the Jewish settlement construction, while the Israeli side accuses the PNA of setting preconditions for the peace talks.

At least 450,000 Israelis live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, including more than 200,000 in East Jerusalem.

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U.S. slams Israel over new settlement activities

Will Netanyahu use a court decision to forgo a plan to alter the Mughrabi Gate? King Abdullah of Jordan is distancing himself from Israel’s prime minister because of the violation of the status quo in East Jerusalem. The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is waiting in the corner for the slightest provocation against Islamic holy places by the Israeli government. The only trouble Benjamin Netanyahu is still missing is that of the Mughrabi Gate, at the entrance to the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary compound.

Whether he likes it or not, that problem is already nearing boiling point. But two weeks ago, the Jerusalem District Court supplied him with a ladder. Now, the prime minister must decide whether he wants to use it to climb down from the ramp, or whether he prefers to climb up, and gamble with what is left of Israel’s relations with the Muslim world.

Next week will mark the third anniversary of the start of the salvage dig at this sensitive site, which leads to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and overlooks the Western Wall. Back then, close to 2,000 policemen accompanied archaeologists and workers to the compound. Their assignment was to prepare for restoration work at the site, after cracks were discovered in the ramp leading to the gate in 2004.

Rumors flew through the Arab world that the Jews were trying to undermine the foundations of the mosque and prepare the area for the construction of a third Temple. The Jordanian king warned that the work would undermine the stability of the Middle East. A Hamas spokesman warned that damage to the mosque would put an end to the temporary cease-fire. A few months later, a team of experts from Turkey examined the excavations and asserted that this was an attempt to destroy cultural assets from the Islamic period.

The Western Wall Rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz, is a man of action: He never for a moment hid his intention of exploiting the repair of the ramp to turn the unused space below it into an extension of the women’s prayer section. He would joke that the Lord had answered his prayers by putting cracks in the ramp, which would make it possible to reduce the crowding at the Western Wall Plaza. The rabbi also used his connections in earthly Jerusalem – namely, in the office of then prime minister Ehud Olmert.

Together with the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter, Rabinowitz promoted a detailed plan for changing the face of the Mughrabi ramp. And Olmert even put himself at the head of a special ministerial committee for advancing the project. The plan went from one planning committee to another until it reached the National Planning and Building Committee.

But two weeks ago, something happened in Jerusalem that threatens to spoil the plan. The president of the Jerusalem District Court, Judge Moussia Arad, took a look at the pictures shown her by attorney Kais Nasser, who is representing Islamic historian Dr. Mahmoud Massalha in his petition against the plan. She looked, and it apparently had an effect.

According to the pictures, which were taken in 2004, the damage to the ramp is small and concentrated mainly in its northern section. An expert opinion accompanying the photographs stated that the cracks did not affect the other parts of the ramp at all, so it is possible to renovate it quickly, at a cost of no more than NIS 50,000.

Arad ordered representatives of the Prime Minister’s Office to get back to her within a month about whether their boss would accept her proposal to shelve the project for expanding the women’s prayer section. Meanwhile, Nasser will obtain UNESCO’s opinion of the plan. The United Nations organization has been monitoring the project from its inception to ensure that the work does no harm to the site.

But Nasser’s joy is mixed with skepticism. “We have proved that the fall of a few stones was exploited in order to change the appearance of a site of unparalleled sensitivity and explosiveness,” the Jerusalem attorney said Monday. But he quickly added: “Unfortunately, in view of the opposition of the Western Wall lobby and its great influence, I find it difficult to believe the state will accept the court’s proposal.”

So what if the Turks are angry? Their ambassador has not sat on a sofa opposite Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon for a long time.

The shallow Left

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has nicknamed the Israeli Left the “Deep Left,” turning this depleted camp into a strike force that threatens the peace initiative of his friend, Benjamin Netanyahu. In a new book published by Am Oved, “Malkodet Hakav Hayarok” (“The Green Line Trap”), Prof. Yehouda Shenhav joins in dancing on the grave of the Zionist Left that supports a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.

The Tel Aviv University sociologist, one of the leaders of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition, puts the word “Left” in quotes and claims that it formulates its perception of the conflict out of a cultural, economic and political worldview that is essentially sectorial and conservative. In his eyes, the 1967 paradigm is the main consciousness barrier Israelis face in addressing the conflict, and he prophesies that it will collapse in favor of the 1948 paradigm.

In Shenhav’s view, the liberal Left focuses on the war against the settlements in order to preserve Israel within the Green Line, and in this way sentences the refugee issue to oblivion. The return of tens of thousands of settlers to within the Green Line is, in his opinion, a fantasy of the liberal Left, which does not deal at all with the morality of such an evacuation. And as if that were not enough, he adds: “The ‘moderate Left’ participated actively in normalizing the moral injustices that Green-Line Israel created.” Shenhav claims that the mental terror created by the demographic discourse does violence to the Palestinians and, no less so, to the Jews.

Shenhav says he does not deny the right of the Jews, as a national collective, to self-determination. But at the same time, he proposes a model that will include the return of any Palestinian refugees that so desire, so as to realize the legitimate rights of both nations in the space they share.

After being attacked by Barak from the right and by philosophers such as Shenhav from the left, it is not surprising that the peace camp is in trouble.

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Will Netanyahu use a court decision to forgo a plan to alter the Mughrabi Gate?Will Netanyahu use a court decision to forgo a plan to alter the Mughrabi Gate at Holy Jerusalem?

One day after the United States demanded that Israel stop building projects in east Jerusalem, Russia joined the call, urging the Jewish state to immediately halt construction in the area, and saying that a failure to do so would be a violation of the road map peace agreement.
jpost.com

Russia, France up pressure on Israel to halt East Jerusalem building

Israel, Start with the outposts

By Yoel Marcus haaretz.com

Israel rejects US demand to halt east Jerusalem project

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