The Israeli government has stepped in to save a house built illegally by Jewish settlers in a volatile Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, complicating already troubled US efforts to renew Mideast peacemaking, the Associated Press reported.
The move is meant to skirt a court order to evacuate and seal the house, thus easing settler anger over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to slow Jewish settlement construction.
But it is likely to fuel new frictions with the Palestinians, who hope to establish a future capital in that sector of the holy city.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israel’s latest attempts to entrench its presence in East Jerusalem only further discourage peace efforts.
Israeli officials “know for sure that there will never be peace without East Jerusalem being the capital of Palestine”, Erekat said Tuesday. “By undermining this, they’re undermining the peace process.”
Sovereignty over East Jerusalem is one of the most highly charged issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians, and competing claims to it have erupted into deadly violence in the past.
The latest controversy surrounds a seven-storey building built by the ultranationalist settler group Ateret Cohanim in 2004 in the Silwan neighbourhood. After years of legal battles, a court last July determined the structure was illegally built and ordered residents to leave.
Jerusalem’s Mayor Nir Barkat, who opposed the ruling, caved in last month and agreed to evacuate the building where eight families have been living under 24-hour government guard.
But the evacuation orders were abruptly cancelled Monday after Netanyahu’s interior minister reportedly decided to give the house - named for Jonathan Pollard, the American Jew convicted of spying in the US for Israel - retroactive approval.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s office did not return calls seeking comment, and Netanyahu’s office said he was not involved in the matter.
The Palestinians refuse to resume peace talks until Israel halts all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, arguing the widening Israeli presence chips away at land they claim for a future state.
Israel occupied both areas in the 1967 Mideast war.
Netanyahu has offered a partial settlement freeze in the West Bank, but says East Jerusalem is off limits and will remain Israel’s forever.
Washington’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, has been trying to break the deadlock for more than a year and recently proposed shuttle diplomacy through American mediators.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signalled Tuesday he was open to Mitchell’s proposal and that Palestinians “must keep the doors open and give him the opportunity” to restart the process.
Indirect Middle East peace talks should begin soon, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reported, in the first public comment by an Israeli official on a US initiative.
Lieberman made the remarks during a visit to Azerbaijan, when he told President Ilham Aliyev “that in his estimation, indirect talks with the Palestinians would begin shortly”, the foreign ministry said.
Lieberman’s comments came a day after Palestinian officials said Abbas had agreed in principle to indirect talks with Israel under US mediation but requested a number of guarantees.
The latest US proposal for renewing peace talks suspended more than a year ago would have the two sides hold three months of indirect negotiations and have Israel make several goodwill gestures to the Palestinians.
The Palestinians would continue to require a complete freeze of Israeli settlements before any direct negotiations but not as a precondition to indirect talks.
The Palestinians said if accepted, the talks would begin February 20 with US envoy Mitchell shuttling between the two sides.
The two sides have been at loggerheads for months as Washington has called for the renewal of negotiations that were suspended when Israel launched its three-week Gaza offensive in December 2008.
The Palestinians have refused to return to the negotiating table without a complete freeze of Jewish settlement growth in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem.
Israeli security forces on Tuesday arrested nine Palestinians in a second raid in as many days in a refugee camp in mainly Arab East Jerusalem after youths hurled stones at them.
“Nine people were arrested after border police and police came under attack from stone throwers,” said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
Several dozen youths could be seen hurling rocks, bottles and paint at security forces for the second consecutive day in the Shoufat refugee camp.
The camp is a crowded neighbourhood of dilapidated concrete blocks that house Palestinian refugees and the descendants of those who fled or lost their homes when Israel was created in 1948 or when it occupied East Jerusalem with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War.
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