JERUSALEM — Israel said on Tuesday that it would accelerate the construction of 2,000 housing units in contested areas of East Jerusalem and in two West Bank settlements. The announcement came a day after the Palestinians won full membership in Unesco in the face of staunch Israeli and American opposition.
The Israeli move touched upon one of the rawest nerves of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Palestinians have been demanding a complete halt in settlement construction as a condition for resuming long-stalled peace negotiations, and the international powers have repeatedly condemned Israeli announcements of building plans in these areas.
With the Palestinians focused on their quest for recognition of statehood by the United Nations Security Council and other United Nations agencies and the Israelis expediting construction, recent efforts to bring the sides back to the negotiating table appeared to be moving in reverse.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement that the Israeli government’s decision would “accelerate the destruction of the peace process.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry described the Unesco vote in Paris on Monday as a “unilateral Palestinian maneuver” that “further removes the possibility for a peace agreement.” The ministry also said that the vote “places unnecessary burdens on the route to renewing negotiations.” Israel has been calling for a return to talks without preconditions.
Israel did not explicitly link its decision to expedite settlement construction to the vote at Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, but a senior Israeli official said that it came in response to a list of grievances against the Palestinian leadership, including its refusal to return to negotiations and its efforts to move ahead with “unilateral steps at the United Nations.”
“You cannot demand from the Israeli public to continue to exercise restraint when the Palestinian leadership repeatedly slams doors in their face,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.
He added that Israel would temporarily withhold the transfer of tax revenues that it collects for the Palestinian Authority, pending a final government decision on their future. Israel has delayed transferring this revenue in the past, most recently last May in response to a reconciliation agreement between Fatah, the party that dominates the authority, and its Islamic rival, Hamas.
Israel said that 1,650 of the new housing units would be built in areas of Jerusalem that were conquered from Jordan in the 1967 war and later annexed, a move that was never recognized internationally. The rest will be built in Efrat and Maale Adumim, settlements to the south and east of the city, respectively.
All these are areas that Israel intends to keep under any permanent arrangement with the Palestinians, but that the Palestinians claim as part of a future state.
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