ISRAELI LEADERS have dismissed mounting international criticism over plans to build an extra 900 homes in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Gilo, on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman told his visiting French counterpart Bernard Kouchner yesterday that Gilo was an integral part of Jerusalem and Israel, similar to the cities of Tel Aviv and Herzliya.
He stressed that the relevant municipal committees were processing the planning permission for the expansion, and the government did not intend to interfere.
Some 40,000 Israelis live in Gilo, at Jerusalem’s southern tip, just north of Bethlehem.
Although the neighbourhood was built on West Bank land, Israel incorporated Gilo, along with other new Jewish neighbourhoods built in the capital after the 1967 war, into Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima party, told Mr Kouchner that there was widespread agreement in Israel that such neighbourhoods should not be part of any settlement freeze demanded by the Palestinians and the international community.
“Gilo is part of the Israeli consensus, and that understanding is important for every discussion on the final borders of any future agreement,” Ms Livni said.
US president Barack Obama added his voice to the criticism of Israel over the Gilo project.
In a Fox News interview, Mr Obama said additional settlement building did not make Israel safer. He said such moves made it harder to achieve peace in the region and embittered the Palestinians in a way that he said could be “very dangerous”.
The European Union presidency also issued a statement yesterday expressing “dismay” over the decision to expand Gilo.
The statement said “such activities prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations and threaten the viability of a two-state solution.”
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon joined Western countries in condemning Israel’s decision, referring to Gilo as a “settlement built on Palestinian land that undermines efforts for peace”.
Nabil Abu Radaineh, an aide to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, warned that the new building plan “destroyed the last chance for the peace process”. With the controversy over Gilo mounting, about 100 residents gathered yesterday for a cornerstone ceremony for a new Jewish neighbourhood elsewhere in east Jerusalem.
The Nof Zion neighbourhood for religious Jews is being built adjacent to the Palestinian village of Jabel Mukaber, which also lies within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries.
Attending the ceremony was Danny Danon, a member of the Knesset parliament from the ruling Likud party headed by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I am relaying a message to president Obama – take your hands off Jerusalem,” he said.