Israeli settlements - Tag Search

Gregg and I have been wondering for a couple of days how the United States would respond to being publicly embarrassed by an Israeli government that seems bent on continuing with the expansion of illegal settlements even as the West tries to organize highly sensitive negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

We didn't have to wait that long: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a 43-minute phone conversation on Friday morning to rebuke the Israeli leader about the "deeply negative signal" his government sent by approving more settler homes in East Jerusalem. Could this be the first sign of a tougher Obama administration approach toward Israel?

I thought about writing a long rebuttal to these two Aaron David Miller pieces, but after keeping up with a week of tiresome news from Israel I just don't have the energy.

Suffice it to say that his argument -- Obama shouldn't pick a fight with Israel over East Jerusalem settlements, and instead should focus on restarting proximity talks -- is the triumph of process over peace. Miller literally encourages both sides to "continue the dance," to perpetuate the untenable status quo.

In the wake of Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, a Knesset committee on Thursday endorsed a change to the country's planning procedures aimed at preventing a similarly embarrassing episode of bad timing from occurring again, the AP reports.

Within 24 hours of Biden's arrival, shortly after the Palestinians had agreed to so-called "proximity talks," Israel approved the construction of some 1,600 illegal homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem.

But the proposed change in the Knesset isn't meant to give greater scrutiny to settlement decisions; it's supposed to ensure that the timing of such announcements isn't as embarrassing in the future.

We'd like to blog about Joe Biden's Tel Aviv speech, but the White House still hasn't e-mailed a transcript to reporters (perhaps because it was undergoing some last-minute revisions?).

News reports say Biden urged Israel and the Palestinians to begin proximity talks without delay. But they're already in doubt: The Arab League held an emergency meeting in Cairo last night (عربي), and decided to withdraw its support for the talks because of the new construction in Ramot Shlomo.

Israel's interior minister, Eli Yishai, has apologized for the announcement of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem's Ramot Shlomo neighborhood while U.S. vice president Joe Biden is in Israel -- though not for the decision itself.

So much for the velvet glove. The White House -- which obviously recognizes that the latest new construction in East Jerusalem has the potential to overshadow vice president Joe Biden's entire trip -- put out a harsh statement on the Israeli decision.

It's just a statement, of course, and not backed by any real consequences, but by diplomatic standards -- and the standards of Washington's recent statements on Israeli settlements -- it's rather strong. Full statement is after the jump.

The Israeli government continues to roll out the red carpet for U.S. vice president Joe Biden: Israel's interior ministry just announced the approval of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem's largely-haredi Ramot Shlomo neighborhood. (The neighborhood is actually north of Jerusalem proper, but it's on the Palestinian side of the Green Line.)

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office hasn't said anything yet about the new construction, nor has Biden.

But the decision will clearly be a big story in Arabic-language media, and it will figure prominently in any coverage of Biden's visit. Al-Jazeera is treating it as a breaking news item, and it's already catching on (عربي) in Palestinian sources. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, called it a "disaster" that will undermine proximity talks.

Evan added some details overnight to my post on Israel's latest West Bank settlement construction, including a statement from State Department spokesman PJ Crowley. State belatedly sent reporters a full transcript of Crowley's remarks -- and, as Evan said, it's pretty lukewarm stuff.

U.S. vice president Joe Biden arrived in Israel on Monday ahead of a week-long trip to the Middle East. The Obama administration is billing this as a hugely important trip -- a chance to lay the groundwork for "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and also a chance to speak directly to the Israeli people. And indeed, the White House announced on Monday that both sides had agreed to the talks.

President Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, arrived in Ramallah last night to begin "pre-talks" to the "proximity talks" the United States hopes will occur between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the National reports. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone who has much faith in their ultimate success.

You've probably heard that the Israeli planning commission last week approved 600 new homes in Pisgat Ze'ev in East Jerusalem. Pisgat Ze'ev is another one of those settlements, like Gilo, which is mostly Jewish and therefore unlikely to return to Palestinian control in a two-state settlement. So I'm not at all surprised by the commission's decision.

Israel is about three months into Benjamin Netanyahu's 10-month partial settlement freeze in the West Bank -- and so far the emphasis is very much on "partial."

The defense ministry released a report today documenting violations of the freeze in 29 settlements -- one-fourth of all Israeli settlements. Violations happened in some of Israel's largest West Bank settlement blocs, like Ma'ale Adumim and Beitar Illit. The Israeli group Peace Now documented separate violations in five other settlements. In some cases, settlers did construction work on Shabbat or under cover of darkness to avoid inspectors.

Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, thinks that Israeli Arab villages should be annexed by a future Palestinian state, in exchange for Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Ayalon proposed the "population swaps" during a wide-ranging interview in London (عربي) with Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. Ayalon essentially argues that Israel's Arabs aren't full citizens, because (unlike Jews and Druze men) they're not subject to mandatory military service. So he proposes redrawing Israel's future borders to make those Arab villages a part of Palestine -- a move which would eliminate a demographic pressure on the Jewish state.

The entire Israeli government is locked in a heated debate over Beit Yonatan -- the "House of Jonathan" -- a seven-story building housing eight Jewish settler families in the mostly Arab neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem.

The building is funded by Ateret Cohanim, a right-wing settler organization, and named after Jonathan Pollard, an American serving a life sentence for spying for Israel. And it's illegal: It was built without a permit in 2004.

There are reports this morning that George Mitchell, the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Israel if the Jewish state blocks final status talks with the Palestinians. (The original source for these reports appears to be this Yedioth Ahronoth story.)

Certainly makes for a compelling headline -- but there's much less here than the headline suggests. If you read his remarks, Mitchell said only that the U.S. could, in theory, cut off aid to Israel. That's thoroughly uncontroversial! The question is whether the U.S. would cut off Israel.

If you think that's possible, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

The Jerusalem planning committee has approved three new apartment buildings in Shuafat, an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The buildings, which could house up to 50 families, are being funded by Irving Moskovich, an American Jew who has funded numerous projects in East Jerusalem.

Yesterday's announcement came just hours after the committee approved four other residential buildings, housing 24 families, on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem.

The White House issued a statement earlier this morning on Israel's decision to build nearly 700 new homes in East Jerusalem. Full statement republished after the jump. It's fairly predictable: It condemns the new construction, calls for negotiations without preconditions, and will mean absolutely nothing.

Ha'aretz ran an analysis piece by Zvi Bar'el headlined It is easy for Netanyahu to circumvent Obama. I think it's a smart postmortem on Obama's first year of Middle East diplomacy: Netanyahu has figured out exactly which concessions will appease Obama without sacrificing his core principles.

Hence Israel's Channel 10 reported today that the housing ministry has issued bids for the construction of 692 new homes in three East Jerusalem settlements -- Neve Yaakov, Pisgat Ze'ev, and Har Homa. (Like Gilo, these settlements are not geographically in "east" Jerusalem; Har Homa, for example, is south of the city. But they're on the Palestinian side of the Green Line.)

One of our regular commenters, the enigmatic "i," makes this point about yesterday's post on settlement expansion in the West Bank:

None of the settlements you mentioned are going to be part of a Palestinian state. So, this post is rather strange.

It's true: Most if not all of the settlements in question will become part of Israel in any two-state peace deal. But they're still settlements -- meaning that they're on the wrong side of the Green Line -- so any new construction will be viewed as undermining Israel's partial settlement freeze.

The partial settlement freeze announced last month by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu includes an exception for "public buildings," officially defined as those for "education and other vital public needs."

Apparently this is a "vital public need," according to the Israeli government:

Israel's Civil Administration announced today that it approved 492 new units in West Bank settlements. Most are in Gush Etzion (149 units), Maale Adumim (89 units), Modin Illit (84 units) and Givat Ze'ev (76 units).

And, oh yes, an "extreme sports park" in Ariel, a West Bank settlement about 15km southwest of Nablus.