Dozens of Palestinian stone-throwers clashed with Israeli police in East Jerusalem on Tuesday on a "day of rage" Hamas Islamists declared in protest at Israel's consecration of an ancient synagogue in the city

Dozens of Palestinian stone-throwers clashed with Israeli police in East Jerusalem on Tuesday on a “day of rage” Hamas Islamists declared in protest at Israel’s consecration of an ancient synagogue in the city.The violence presented another challenge to U.S. efforts to revive Middle East peace talks after Israel angered Palestinians and touched off a dispute with Washington by announcing plans last week to build 1,600 homes for Jews near East Jerusalem.Palestinians hurled stones at police and burned tires and trash bins in several areas of East Jerusalem, which Israel captured along with the West Bank in a 1967 war.

Police responded with tear gas and fired rubber bullets, witnesses said. Some 40 Palestinians were treated at East Jerusalem hospitals for minor injuries, medical officials said.A police spokesman said some 3,000 officers were put on high alert after Hamas, an Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip and wields influence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, called for anti-Israeli protests.”We call on the Palestinian people to regard Tuesday as a day of rage against the occupation’s (Israel’s) procedures in Jerusalem against al-Aqsa mosque,” Hamas said in a statement.

Hamas and Palestinian officials affiliated with its rival Fatah movement have said the restoration work at the ancient Hurva synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s walled Old City endangered al-Aqsa, situated some 400 meters (yards) away.Israel has denied the allegation.An inauguration ceremony was held Monday at the synagogue, which was blown up by Jordanian forces when they overran the Jewish Quarter in the 1948 Middle East war. Israel captured the area 19 years later.

Sporadic violence has erupted in recent weeks in Jerusalem after Israel decided to include West Bank religious sites in a Jewish national heritage plan stoked Palestinian anger.Citing biblical and historical links, Israel sees all of Jerusalem as its capital, a claim not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In Washington Monday, a State Department spokesman voiced concern about the tensions over the rededication of the synagogue and appealed for calm.”We’re deeply disturbed by statements made by several Palestinian officials mischaracterizing the event in question, which can only serve to heighten the tensions that we see,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

A crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations over the settlement housing project, opposed by Washington, deepened Monday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s said he would not curb construction of homes for Jews in and around Jerusalem.After Netanyahu’s defiant comments, U.S. officials said U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who had planned to leave Washington Monday for discussions with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on getting indirect negotiations under way, had put off his departure.Announcement of the housing plan during a visit last week by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden embarrassed the White House and Palestinians, who had just agreed to begin indirect talks with Israel, demanded the project be scrapped first.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in unusually blunt remarks, called Israel’s actions an insult.Clinton telephoned Netanyahu Friday to convey unspecified demands about the housing project as well as about demonstrating commitment to the U.S.-mediated peace talks, the State Department said, without elaborating.U.S. officials said they were still waiting for Israel’s formal response. Israeli media reports said Clinton had asked for the settlement plan to be scrapped and for Israel to agree to discuss core statehood issues with the Palestinians.(Reuters)

RAMALLAH, West Bank Israel to build 700 apartments in east Jerusalem

Israel 700 apartments

RAMALLAH, West Bank  Israel announced Monday it is building nearly 700 new apartments for Jews in east Jerusalem, where Palestinians hope to set up the capital of a future state. The U.S., Palestinians and the European Union condemned the plan, a fresh setback to American efforts to restart Mideast peace talks.The Palestinians have said they will not resume talks without an Israeli settlement freeze, and criticized what they said was another show of bad faith by Israel.”With each individual action it undertakes on the ground, Israel is saying no to meaningful negotiations,” said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, who is trying to find a formula for reviving negotiations, is due in Israel and the West Bank in the second week of January.White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the U.S. “opposes new Israeli construction in east Jerusalem” and that neither side should take steps that pre-empt the outcome of talks. He urged both sides to restart negotiations without preconditions.

Sweden, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, said Israel’s latest plans “prevent the creation of an atmosphere conducive to resuming negotiations on a two-state solution.”Israel insists the Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem are not settlements, but part of its own capital, a view disputed by the international community.The plan announced Monday takes the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into new political territory, by initiating construction for Jews in east Jerusalem. Up to now, the government has been saying it was endorsing plans already in the pipeline. Israel’s Housing Ministry confirmed that the new construction bids are Netanyahu’s first in east Jerusalem.

A partition of Jerusalem – with Jewish neighborhoods going to Israel and Arab neighborhoods to a future Palestine – would likely be part of any peace deal. Palestinians say that with each expansion of Jewish areas, the Arab portion of the city is shrinking and partition becomes more difficult.Netanyahu said he was willing to get back to talks immediately, telling a group of Israeli ambassadors: “Israel wants peace.”

Israeli-Palestinian talks broke off a year ago. After coming to power nine months ago, Netanyahu withdrew key promises made to the Palestinians by his predecessor, including a willingness, in principle, to discuss the future of Jerusalem.About 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements and another 180,000 in east Jerusalem, areas claimed by the Palestinians for their state. Under U.S. pressure, Netanyahu agreed to slow new housing construction in the West Bank, though construction of more than 3,000 houses there continues.

The Israeli leader refuses to stop building in east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed. He says he will not cede any part of the city.Successive Israeli governments have put up sprawling Jewish neighborhoods around east Jerusalem, and Monday’s decision would build in three of them: Pisgat Zeev, Har Homa and Neve Yaakov.

Abbas insists on a total settlement construction freeze, including east Jerusalem, and also wants assurances that the pre-1967 war borders would serve as the basis for talks that would pick up where they left off under Netanyahu’s more moderate predecessor, Ehud Olmert.In those talks, Olmert and Abbas accepted the principle of swapping land – meaning Israel would retain some West Bank land to incorporate large Jewish settlements but compensate the Palestinians with Israeli land. However, the Palestinians did not accept the offer because they felt Israel wanted to hold on to too much land, and Netanyahu withdrew it.

Mitchell has been sounding out Israel about possible compromise, in hopes of getting the talks restarted, according to an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and former Israeli lawmaker Yossi Beilin.Beilin said Netanyahu has not accepted the idea of basing the talks on the borders before the 1967 war, in which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem. Beilin, an architect of Israeli-Palestinian peace accords in the 1990s, remains in touch with government officials.

An Abbas aide said Mitchell is also talking to Israeli officials about possible goodwill gestures, such as releasing more Palestinian prisoners and expanding West Bank areas under full or partial Palestinian control. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the content of the meetings.

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.