Israeli construction plans threaten peace talks
MARK MACKINNON
From Monday's Globe and Mail
December 23, 2007 at 7:43 PM EST
JERUSALEM —
Israel was harshly criticized by Palestinian leaders and its own pro-peace lobby yesterday after confirming the planned construction of more than 740 new homes in the occupied West Bank.
The announcement of the new building came ahead of a scheduled round of talks today in Jerusalem between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams. A senior aide to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said that if the construction went ahead, there would be “no use” in continuing peace talks.
Today's negotiating session, if it happens, will be the second since a peace summit hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush last month in Annapolis, Md. The first meeting two weeks ago was marred by Israel's announced plans to build more than 300 new homes in the Har Homa settlement on the southern fringe of Jerusalem.
Rafi Eitan, Israel's minister for Jerusalem Affairs, confirmed yesterday that the government's 2008 budget contains some $250-million (U.S.) to build an additional 500 homes in Har Homa and 240 in the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim.
Building on occupied land violates Israel's commitments under the internationally backed “road map” to peace, which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recommitted himself to at the Annapolis summit.
“
Although the Prime Minister declared there was going to be a full settlement freeze, we see he didn't really intend it,” said Hagit Ofran, who heads a settlement watch program for Peace Now, an Israeli organization. “This is devastating to the whole idea of negotiating peace.”
Mr. Eitan, however, argued that building in Jerusalem was not covered by Mr. Olmert's pledges. In 1980, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, a move not recognized by the international community, and expanded the city's municipal boundaries to include what is now Har Homa. The settlement is now home to 5,000 people.
“Har Homa is an integral part of Jerusalem and Israel will not stop building there,” Mr. Eitan told Army Radio. “It is Israel's duty to provide its citizens with a place to live.”
The future of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest issues in the peace talks. Palestinians want predominantly Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, while Israel considers the city to be indivisible.
Maale Adumim, already home to more than 30,000 people, lies beyond even Israel's definition of Jerusalem's borders. Israel has said it hopes to keep Maale Adumim and other large West Bank settlements in any future peace deal.
Mr. Abbas and other Palestinian leaders expressed bewilderment at the surge in Israel's settlement activity in the weeks since the peace process began.
“We can't understand these frantic settlement activities at a time when we are talking about final status negotiations,” Mr. Abbas told the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa. “We have begun negotiations and they face obstacles, the most prominent of which is the issue of settlements, which has held us back for so long.”
His aide, Nabil Amr, said, “If Israel continues with such actions, there will be no use for any negotiations.”
Peace hopes have also been staggered in recent weeks by escalating violence in and around the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of the Islamist Hamas movement.
Hamas, which routed Mr. Abbas's Fatah movement in a military takeover six months ago, has declared itself opposed to the Annapolis process.
The road map commits the Palestinian side to halting violence and dismantling “terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.” But Mr. Abbas now has zero ability to follow through in what would be a large chunk of a future Palestinian state.
Since the talks began, Hamas and other militant groups have been firing mortars and crude rockets into southern Israel on a daily basis. At least five more were fired yesterday, doing limited damage.
Israeli military operations in Gaza, meanwhile, have left 20 Palestinians dead in the last week alone.
Israel is also blockading Gaza, leading to severe economic hardships in the coastal territory.
Yesterday, both Israel and Hamas rejected the idea of a truce. “There is no other way to describe what's happening there other than real war between the army and the terror groups,” Mr. Olmert said after the weekly meeting of his cabinet.
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