JERUSALEM: A plan for settling thousands more Jews in a strategic part of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem has quietly cleared a key bureaucratic hurdle, threatening to cut a link between Jerusalem and the West Bank and endanger already slim peace prospects.| Hey Paleos: you might want to make peace before all the choice land is gone and you find yourselves living in Mauritania... |
"This is a game changer," Daniel Seidemann, a Jerusalem expert, said of Givat Hamatos. While relatively small in size, "this is a mega-settlement in terms of impact," he added.
The plan calls for about 2,600 apartments, including about 1,800 for Givat Hamatos and 800 for an expansion of Beit Safafa, an adjacent Palestinian neighborhood,
| So both the Israelis and the Palestinians are to get more housing. Do the Palestinians not want more housing for themselves? |
Givat Hamatos would cut off one of the key remaining ones -- cutting off the area of Beit Safafa from the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
"It's another slap in the face of all those international efforts being made toward the resumption of a meaningful political process," Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said. "It's not only damaging to our own interests, it's damaging to all those who have a vested interest in a two-state solution," referring to a Palestinian state next to Israel.
The new building plan drew condemnation over the weekend from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
| Oh, they condemn everything. Carry on... |