US 'dismay' at Israel over Gilo plan

Guardian.uk

The White House yesterday expressed exasperation with Israel over a plan to build 900 new houses on the West Bank at a time when Barack Obama is trying to broker a Middle East peace agreement.

Although Obama is mainly focused on a tour of south-east Asia, the White House took time out to express disappointment over approval of the new houses at Gilo, a controversial settlement on the outskirts of east Jerusalem.

It is politically risky for Israel to snub Obama so publicly. The White House has been pressing Israel for at least a week not to take this course of action. The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said it was "dismayed" by the decision. "At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed," he said.

Obama brought together the Israeli leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, in New York in September but failed to secure the restart of negotiations. Abbas said he would not enter negotiations while Israel continued to build settlements on the West Bank. The Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved the Gilo expansion yesterday.

The Palestinians denounced the move as a provocation. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "We condemn this in the strongest possible terms. It shows that it is meaningless to resume negotiations when this goes on."

Since the failure to secure a resumption of talks in September, Obama, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Middle East special envoy George Mitchell have been working to close the gap between the two sides.

The Palestinians want a complete freeze on settlement construction first while Netanyahu has offered a temporary freeze, excluding 2,500 houses he insists are already in the pipeline. The Gilo expansion is in addition to those.

Jerusalem and settlements are key sticking points in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Israel captured east Jerusalem in 1967. It insists that east Jerusalem is part of Israel and rejects efforts to restrict building there. Palestinians consider the Jewish neighbourhoods there to be settlements.

In a statement, Netanyahu's office defended the plan. "This concerns a routine procedure of the district planning commission," it said. "The neighbourhood of Gilo is an integral part of Jerusalem."

Although the Obama administration has been more critical of Israel than the Bush administration and has expressed disapproval of settlement expansion in the West Bank, a reprimand such as yesterday's is still relatively rare.

The US state department expressed its disapproval yesterday and the White House could have chosen to leave it at that but opted instead to join the criticism.

Gibbs, reflecting White House unhappiness, said: "Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations.

"The US also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes. Our position is clear: the status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties."

Although Gilo is on the Palestinian side of the 1967 Green Line, the border before that year's war, Israel claims it is not on the West Bank so is not a settlement.

The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as their capital.

On Friday, Gibbs had expressed regret over reports of the new construction, saying Obama did not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion.

Britain also criticised the plan yesterday. The Foreign Office said: "The foreign secretary has been very clear that a credible deal involves Jerusalem as a shared capital. Expanding settlements on occupied land in east Jerusalem makes that deal much harder. So this decision on Gilo is wrong and we oppose it."