Israel approved the construction of houses illegally on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem as many as 3336 housing units during March

Ramallah  – Israel approved the construction of houses illegally on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem as many as 3336 housing units during March, according to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Monday. The giant project, including construction of 1600 housing units in the Jewish settlement of Ramat Shlomo and 600 other homes near these settlements, the report said. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem regional government has set a plan and is awaiting approval to build more houses 50,000 units in the coming months, according to the report.

Last month, the United States did not reach agreement with Israel on the Tel Aviv latest plan to build Jewish settlements in the West Bank including Jerusalem. Failure to achieve agreement came after a two-day visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S.. Discussion between Prime Minister Netanyahu and U.S. Special Envoy for the Middle East, George Mitchell has been completed but did not resolve the dispute between the two countries, U.S. officials said.

U.S. President Barack Obama in his meeting with Netanyahu demanded that the Jewish state in order to rebuild trust resumed peace talks with the Palestinians. Obama-Netanyahu meeting comes amid tension that rarely happens between the U.S. and Israel relate to American demands to freeze all Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank. U.S. believes that Israel’s settlement building activities for the Jewish settlers disrupt the prospect of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Israel, Washington’s anger when the government announced the construction of 1600 houses in East Jerusalem, during U.S. Vice-President, Joe Biden, a visit to Tel Aviv. Later, a cabinet minister of Israel apologized for the attitude of Israel which is considered insulting VP nominee Joe Biden. “This attitude should not need to happen in one visit that the vice president of the United States. For that we should express apology for this blunder.” said Welfare Minister Isaac Herzogliter Isreal. Palestinian government said the plan to build homes near Jerusalem that can shut off any opportunity to revive peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine.( Xinhua-Oana)

Jewish settlers planned a mass protest in downtown Jerusalem on Wednesday night

downtown Jerusalem

JERUSALEM  Jewish settlers planned a mass protest in downtown Jerusalem on Wednesday night in what they said would be the largest show of resistance to the government’s new slowdown on new housing construction in the West Bank.

Police expected thousands of people to attend the demonstration, to take place outside the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The size of the turnout could reflect how widespread support is for increasingly fierce settler resistance to the government building ban.

Separately, Israel’s parliament on Wednesday gave preliminary approval to a piece of legislation that would require a national referendum on any peace deal that gives up control of east Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.

Netanyahu announced the 10-month halt in most West Bank construction late last month in an attempt to restart peace talks, which broke down a year ago. The new restrictions have infuriated Jewish settlers and their backers in Netanyahu’s hard-line coalition, and government inspectors have been harassed while trying to enforce the ban.

The settlers have been struggling to regain their strength since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, uprooting all 8,000 settlers who were living there.

At the Wednesday protest, lawmakers and settler leaders planned to speak out against Netanyahu, whom they accuse of caving to American pressure.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, himself a settler, said the protest was legitimate.

“If someone came to you and froze construction on your house while you were building it, you would also object,” he told Israel Radio. “I just hope the struggle and the resistance remain within the framework of a legitimate political protest that is acceptable in a democratic state.”

While Netanyahu has painted his order as an unprecedented concession, the Palestinians have dismissed it as insincere and insufficient, since it does not include east Jerusalem or 3,000 homes already under construction in the West Bank. The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem as parts of a future independent state. They say they will not resume talks until all settlement construction ceases.

Speaking after a meeting of top ministers and security chiefs on Wednesday, Netanyahu said the Palestinians seem to have adopted a strategy of “rejecting negotiations with Israel.”

“This is a mistake. There can be no genuine solution without direct negotiations with Israel, in the framework of which we will reach agreements and arrangements between the sides,” he said.

The Israeli settlement watchdog group Peace Now also cast new doubts on the building freeze, saying that building in the West Bank continues to take place at a greater pace than elsewhere in Israel.

“Beyond the political dispute going on around the settlements, the argument of the settlers that they are discriminated against is simply not true,” said Peace Now leader Yariv Oppenheimer.

Some 300,000 settlers live in the West Bank, in addition to 180,000 Jewish Israelis living in east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed soon after. Netanyahu opposes any withdrawal from east Jerusalem, which Israel considers part of its eternal undivided capital.

If approved, the measure passed by parliament Wednesday could constrain the ability of any future Israeli government to turn over captured land as part of a peace deal.

While the Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, Syria demands the return of the Golan Heights. Israel captured both areas in the 1967 Mideast war and subsequently annexed them.

The measure was approved by parliament 68 to 22, but it needs to pass two more parliamentary votes to become law.