By DPA
Tel Aviv/Ramallah : The Israeli government has announced plans to build 300 apartments in a disputed east Jerusalem neighbourhood, prompting the Palestinians to allege that the Israelis are violating their obligations under an international peace plan.
The Israeli housing ministry Tuesday said 307 units would be built in east Jerusalem, which was captured by the Israelis in the 1967 war and remains a key sticking point in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to serve as the capital of an envisioned Palestinian state.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat protested the plan, noting that Israel reaffirmed its commitment to the roadmap of peace at the US-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland, last week aimed at jump-starting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Saeb sent a letter to the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, known collectively as the Mideast quartet who drafted the roadmap, saying the Israeli plan was “a major violation of Israel’s obligations under the roadmap that undermines the entire political process.”
The first phase of the road map requires Israel to freeze all settlement activities, including natural growth, among other obligations.
US State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters in Washington that both sides needed to live up to the roadmap’s terms.
“You know our position on settlements,” he said. “It’s outlined in the roadmap, and we certainly want to see both Israelis and Palestinians honour the commitments that they’ve made there.”
Saeb urged members of the quartet, particularly the US, which is tasked with overseeing the implementation of the roadmap, “to take all necessary steps to reverse this latest violation as well as any future violations of the settlement freeze”.
He described the Israeli settlement expansion decision as “the single greatest threat to the establishment of an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state, and hence, to a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians”.
He said “the opportunity afforded to us at Annapolis will not come a second time. We, therefore, must seize this opportunity now, as the stakes are higher than they have ever been and the consequences of inaction are serious.”
The settlement of Har Homa was established in 1996 on confiscated Palestinian land on the outskirts of Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem. It is one of several settlements that encircle East Jerusalem to cut it off from the rest of the West Bank.