Homes4People

East Jerusalem families hit by destruction order

Israeli bulldozers destroyed at least three Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem today, breaking an unofficial moratorium on house demolitions since the end of 2009.

At least one of the homes was occupied by a family of seven, who removed their belongings shortly before the building was razed.

“They can build hundreds of settlements but I’m not entitled to live in a shack?” Linda al-Rajabi was quoted in the Israeli media as saying.

Two of the demolished homes were in the last stages of construction.

Jerusalem city authorities said all the homes were built without proper planning permission, which Palestinians say is almost impossible to obtain.

Under pressure from Washington, Israel has largely refrained from carrying out demolition orders since last November, when a temporary and partial freeze on settlement construction was agreed.

Approval was given yesterdayfor the building of 32 new homes in the settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev, in East Jerusalem, which is exempt from the freeze. A further 48 housing units are expected to be approved next week.

All settlements on land which Israel occupied in 1967 are illegal under international law.

“The rule of thumb in this part of the world is that in the run-up to US elections Israel has a free hand,” said Jeff Halper, of the International Committee against House Demolitions. “Israel is now taking advantage of that.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli navy said it had made contact with the Libyan aid ship Amalthea, which is attempting to break the sea blockade of Gaza. The ship, carrying 2,000 tons of supplies and 15 activists, is expected to reach territorial waters off Gaza sometime tomorrow.

Israel has urged the ship’s captain to divert to the Egyptian port of el-Arish, but insists it will intercept the boat if it continues on course to Gaza.

Originally published here

UN chief Ban Ki-moon says Jerusalem municipality’s plan to demolish Palestinian homes in Silwan is illegal and unhelpful.

Originally published here

Israel’s defence minister highlights Jerusalem’s ‘King’s Garden’ project at US visit

Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, has attacked the timing of plans to raze Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem as prejudicial to hopes for continuing peace talks, echoing a row over housing that caused an unprecedented crisis between Israel and the US earlier this year.

Barak, visiting Washington, highlighted the ever-sensitive issue of Jerusalem by suggesting that the go-ahead for the controversial “King’s Garden” archaeological park should have been delayed. The US warned yesterday that the decision to develop the project in the Silwan area – taken by the city council rather than the government – threatened the recently resumed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with America as the mediator.

“The King’s Garden project, which has waited for 3,000 years, can wait another three to nine months if government policy considerations necessitate it,” Barak was quoted as telling associates.

The Obama administration had been concerned about the approval and had had “numerous conversations” with Israel about it, said US State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley. “This is expressly the kind of step that we think undermines trust that is fundamental to making progress in the proximity talks.”

Plans to build new housing units for Jews in another part of East Jerusalem ignited the row between the US and Israel in March. Binyamin Netanyahu’s government was criticised at home and abroad when the announcement by a planning body was made during a visit by Joe Biden, the US vice-president, which made it look like a deliberate act of defiance.

But now, as then, domestic controversy is more about the timing of the announcement than the substance. Most Israelis are not prepared to see a building freeze in East Jerusalem. The Arab side of the city was annexed after the 1967 war but Palestinians insist it is their future capital and must be part of any peace deal.

Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said: “Israel continues its settlements policy in East Jerusalem and threatens to harm US efforts to promote proximity talks.” The Silwan issue was also on the agenda for talks between the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and King Abdullah of Jordan.

Barak said the municipal authorities had “shown a lack of common sense and sense of timing – not for the first time”.

In March Netanyahu asked Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, to freeze the project to avoid further trouble.

The plan involves razing 22 Palestinian homes and constructing a tourism centre. A further 66 homes built without proper permits would receive approval retroactively. Residents of the homes due for demolition would be helped to move to other areas of Silwan. Palestinians oppose the plan, claiming its purpose is to strengthen the hold of Jewish settlers.

Netanyahu had been enjoying a brief respite from tensions with the US after Washington praised Israel’s decision to ease the blockade of the Gaza Strip following the international row over its bloody interception of the “freedom flotilla”. The Likud leader is due to hold talks with Obama early next month.

Avigdor Lieberman, the far-right foreign minister, predicted meanwhile that the “moment of truth” in Israeli’s relations with the US would come in September, with the expiry of a moratorium on West Bank settlement building that was reluctantly agreed by Netanyahu. Lieberman told Israeli political correspondents that Abbas was “not a partner for peace”.

Originally published here

US secretary of state says threats to Israel’s security are growing and must be addressed

Hillary Clinton warned Iran and Syria yesterday that America’s commitment to Israel’s security was unshakable, and they should understand the consequences of threats to the Jewish state.

The secretary of state said Syrian transfers of increasingly sophisticated weaponry, including rockets, to militants in southern Lebanon and Gaza could spark new conflict in the Middle East. Additionally, she said a nuclear-armed Iran would profoundly destabilise the region.

“These threats to Israel’s security are real, they are growing and they must be addressed,” she said in the speech to the American Jewish Committee. The speech was the administration’s latest effort to reassure Israel that its ties to the US remain strong, despite tensions that flared last month.

Clinton told the group that Israel was “confronting some of the toughest challenges in her history,” particularly from Iran, Syria and groups they support, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and reaffirmed US determination to get them to change course.

“Transferring weapons to these terrorists, especially longer-range missiles, would pose a serious threat to the security of Israel,” she said.

Israel has accused Syria of providing Hezbollah with Scud missiles, which would dramatically increase the group’s ability to strike targets in Israel. Syria has denied the charges.

US officials have not confirmed Hezbollah’s possession of Scuds but say they are concerned about its growing arsenal of rockets and missiles.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, later addressing the same group, made the same points as Clinton and said Israel was closely watching the situation with Hezbollah and Iran. He said Israel would hold the Lebanese and Syrian governments responsible for the introduction of any “balance-breaking weapons” to Hezbollah.

Getting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to stop supplying these weapons, Clinton said, was one of the administration’s prime goals in returning an ambassador to Damascus. The US has been without an ambassador in Syria for five years. The nominee, career diplomat Robert Ford, is awaiting Senate confirmation.

Some lawmakers have questioned the wisdom of sending an envoy to Syria now, saying it would reward the country for bad behaviour. Clinton argued it would not be “a reward or concession”, but rather “a tool that can give us added leverage and insight and a greater ability to convey strong and unmistakably clear messages aimed at changing Syria’s behaviour”.

“President Assad is making decisions that could mean war or peace for the region,” she said. “We know he’s hearing from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. It is crucial that he also hear directly from us, so that the potential consequences of his actions are clear.”

On Iran, Clinton said the administration remained open to engaging with Tehran, but it must meet international demands to prove its suspect nuclear programme is peaceful, and not a cover for developing atomic weapons. Short of that, the US will continue to press for tough new UN security sanctions on Iran.

Iran is trying to forestall fresh sanctions and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may try to use a nuclear conference at the UN next week to lobby against them.

Last night, the UN confirmed Ahmadinejad was now a confirmed speaker at the conference at its headquarters in New York, which will review the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

Ahead of her speech, Clinton said any attempt by Ahmadinejad to undermine the purpose of the conference would fail.

“If he believes that by coming he can somehow divert attention from this very important global effort or cause confusion that might possibly throw into doubt what Iran has been up to… then I don’t believe he will have a particularly receptive audience,” she said.

In her speech, Clinton also said the US would continue to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal and was hoping to restart indirect talks between the two sides soon.

The speech came after the Guardian revealed that the US had given private assurances to encourage the Palestinians to join indirect Middle East peace talks, including an offer to consider allowing UN security council condemnation of any significant new Israeli settlement activity.

The administration’s special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is due back in the region next week. His visit will follow a weekend meeting of Arab League diplomats at which US officials hope for an endorsement of the indirect talks, which Mitchell would mediate.

An attempt to get those talks started last month fizzled out when Israel announced a new Jewish housing project in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as a future capital.

That drew fierce criticism from the US and led to the worst rift between Washington and its top Middle East ally in decades.

Since then, the administration has sought to repair the damage with a series of recent meetings and speeches from senior officials, including Clinton and James Jones, a national security adviser.

Originally published here

Two teenagers killed day after boys, 15 and 17, shot in village

Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank today amid a new descent into violence.

The two, who Palestinians claimed were detained while ploughing a field of olive trees near Nablus, were shot several times. Palestinian officials said both were 17. The Israeli military said they had tried to stab a soldier.

The deaths bring to five the number of people killed in the region in the past week.

As the violence placed further strain on US efforts to get peace talks under way, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said he would be meeting Barack Obama in the US on Tuesday.

Netanyahu’s visit comes at a time of heightened tensions between Israel and the US over a controversial Jewish housing project in east Jerusalem. The project embarrassed Washington because it was announced while the vice-president, Joe Biden, was in Jerusalem to kickstart Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Earlier today, relatives buried the bodies of two teenage Palestinian boys who were shot dead by Israeli troops yesterday during a demonstration against settlers in the village of Iraq Burin, also near Nablus. Last week, a Thai worker in southern Israel was killed by a rocket fired by militants in Gaza.

Witnesses in Iraq Burin described how Israelis from the nearby hilltop settlement of Brakha came down on to the village’s farmland yesterday. Israeli troops were deployed and Palestinian boys threw stones at the soldiers.

Mohammad Qadus, 15, and Osaid Qadus, 17, were shot dead inside the village shortly after they arrived back in Iraq Burin on a local bus. Neither had taken part in the demonstration, witnesses in the village said.

Amir Aref, 16, a friend of both boys, tried to drag them to safety. He described how he saw Osaid sitting on the ground in front of a store. “I was telling him: ‘Stand up, stand up.’ But he refused to answer,” Aref said. “I looked at him. Blood was coming down from a small hole in his forehead, his brains were coming out.”

He then turned to Mohammad and saw him lying on the road nearby. “I carried him and took him into the village in my arms,” Aref said. “I looked at him and he said ‘Amir’, then blood came out of his mouth. He gasped and then he died.”

Witnesses and doctors at the Nablus speciality hospital, where the boys were treated, said both were hit by what appeared to be live rounds that left small entry wounds.

The Israeli military said in a statement there had been a “violent and illegal riot” in the village and that soldiers “responded with riot dispersal means”. It said troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets, but denied firing live rounds. “Live fire was not used,” the military said.

However, a hospital x-ray of Osaid Qadus, seen by the Guardian, showed a bullet lodged in his brain.

Ahmed Hamad, a doctor at the hospital who treated the two, said the x-ray showed a “classic, pure metallic bullet”. He said both boys had injuries with small entry wounds.

Originally published here

Strongly worded statement from Middle East peace envoys calls for pullout from Palestinian territories within 24 months

The Middle East quartet has strongly denounced Israeli moves to build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem and urged the Israeli government and Palestinians to resume peace negotiations.

In a hard-hitting statement after a meeting in Moscow, the UN, the EU, Russia and the US condemned Israel’s “unilateral” construction plans and said the status of Jerusalem could only be resolved through negotiations between both parties.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “The quartet condemns the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem.”

The quartet expected that talks between Israelis and Palestinians should lead to a negotiated settlement that “within 24 months” ends the occupation of Palestinian territories begun in 1967. The settlement should result “in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours”.

The quartet includes Hillary Clinton for the US; Russia’s foreign secretary, Sergei Lavrov; Tony Blair, the quartet’s special representative; and Lady Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief.

The statement expressed deep alarm at the deteriorating situation in Gaza, urging Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip for both humanitarian and commercial traffic and calling for a “durable resolution to the Gaza crisis”.

Clinton said she had spoken last night to the Israel prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, following his apparent offer of “confidence-building measures” to encourage the renewal of peace talks. She described the conversation as “very useful and productive … We don’t believe unilateral action by any parties are helpful. We’ve made this clear.”

None of the quartet parties were willing to say what pressure they were prepared to put on Israel should it ignore today’s statement.

The quartet called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity “including natural growth”, to dismantle outposts erected since March 2001, and to “refrain from demolitions and evictions in East Jerusalem”. It also appealed for the international community to back the Palestinians’ commitment to build an independent state by offering immediate and concrete support.

A statement from Netanyahu’s office said he proposed a series of steps that would make it easier for the Palestinians to join the talks. He did not specify what these would be, but they could include easing Israeli roadblocks in the West Bank, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from more parts of the West Bank and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

He did not announce, as the US had demanded, a freeze on the construction of Jewish homes in Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem, the key sticking point.

But diplomats in Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem said Netanyahu had privately promised a temporary freeze on new construction. The work, while not cancelled, is to be postponed for several years.

The Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, told the Washington Post: “The goal of both sides at this point is to put this behind us and go forward with the proximity talks as quickly as possible.”

This morning Ban said the Israeli government had approved several long-standing UN humanitarian programmes in Gaza, including a water and sanitation project, a flour mill, temporary schools and 150 houses. The UN secretary general said he would be travelling to Gaza on Sunday to see the situation on the ground there himself, following yesterday’s visit by Lady Ashton. The EU foreign policy chief is understood to have been shocked by her trip to Gaza, privately describing it as “worse than Haiti”.

Asked about her phone conversation with Netanyahu, Clinton today struck a more conciliatory note following her comments last week that Israel’s building plans for East Jerusalem – announced during a visit by the US vice-president, Joe Biden – were “insulting”. Of US-Israeli ties, she said: “Our relationship is ongoing. It is deep and broad. It is strong and enduring.”

She went on: “We believe that the launch of the proximity talks is very much in Israel’s interests, as it is in the interests of the Palestinians. We hope to see these talks commence as soon as possible.”

A US state department spokesman, PJ Crowley, said Clinton and Netanyahu had discussed “specific steps” to improve the outlook for Middle East peace talks. Netanyahu’s spokesman, Nir Chefetz, said the prime minister had proposed “mutual confidence-building steps” that both Israel and the Palestinians could take.

Last night Israel retaliated for a Palestinian rocket attack that killed a Thai agricultural worker. Israeli planes struck at least two targets in Gaza, officials and witnesses said.

The quartet condemned yesterday’s rocket attack from Gaza and called for “an immediate end to violence and terror and for calm to be respected”. It also urged the release of the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Originally published here

Palestinian president appeals to EU foreign policy chief to pressure Israel over housing settlements

Israel faced new international pressure over the deadlocked Middle East peace process today with a visit by Lady Ashton, the European Union’s new foreign policy chief, to the blockaded Gaza Strip controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas.

Ashton was touring United Nations offices, schools and refugee camps but had no plans to meet representatives of Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza, in line with a long-standing boycott by the EU and US.

Minutes after she arrived, a rocket fired from Gaza killed a Thai farm worker in the southern Israeli village of Netiv Ha’asara. Israel Radio reported that responsibility for the attack had been claimed by the radical Palestinan group Ansar al-Sunna. Hamas has tried to enforce a de facto ceasefire since last year’s war.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, asked Ashton for EU intervention to put pressure on Israel to freeze building in the settlements and Jerusalem. Earlier she held talks in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and tomorrow will be in Moscow to join a meeting of the Middle East quartet – Hillary Clinton for the US, the UN’s Ban Ki-Moon, Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov and Tony Blair, the quartet’s special representative.

Ashton is one of the most senior western political figures to visit Gaza since Hamas took power. Only two EU foreign ministers have been to Gaza since last year’s war. Foreign officials are regularly refused entry by Israel or stay away because their governments do not recognise Hamas. The EU is the largest contributor of aid to the Palestinians, delivering €1bn (£890m)a year, and is often described as a “payer but not a player” in the Middle East.

Under heavy pressure to show her mettle after criticism of inexperience and a poor start to her high-profile job, Ashton has said she would push for the launch of Palestinian-Israeli “proximity” talks as a prelude to formal negotiations. But diplomats admit they do not know how to get from indirect to direct talks, let alone how to break the current impasse caused by the East Jerusalem row.

The UN says the blockade of Gaza has left hundreds of thousands living in poverty. The head of the UN’s refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip, John Ging, said Palestinians were hoping for a single outcome from Ashton’s visit – a lifting of the Israeli siege.

Her arrival in the Middle East comes after the row last week between Israel and the US, following Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 homes in the occupied West Bank.

The decision, which was announced during the visit of the US vice-president, Joe Biden, was described by one of Barack Obama’s closest aides, David Axelrod, as an affront to the US that could undermine peace efforts in the Middle East.

Last night the US president said Jerusalem’s new settlement homes “weren’t helpful” in carving out a peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but stressed Washington remained a committed ally of Israel.

“Friends are going to disagree sometimes,” he told Fox News.

Originally published here

Hamas begin ‘day of rage’ as US envoy postpones visit in protest over settlement policy

Israeli-Palestinian tensions erupted into violence today with clashes in East Jerusalem as the US postponed a visit by its Middle East envoy in protest at Binyamin Netanyahu’s settlement policy.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, announced a “day of rage” after Monday’s reopening of a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Old City, clearly seeking to focus international attention on the issue.

The rival Fatah movement also urged Palestinians to flock to the al-Aqsa mosque, the most sensitive of Muslim sites in the divided city. Buses transporting worshippers were turned back.

Israel’s Ynet website reported 49 Palestinians injured in confrontations with Israeli paramilitary border guards. Masked rioters burned tyres and threw stones. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets.

Hamas and Fatah officials have said that restoration work at the Hurva synagogue in the Old City’s Jewish quarter endangered al-Aqsa, situated some 400 yards away. Israel has denied the accusation. The synagogue was destroyed by Jordanian forces in the 1948 war.

The trouble erupted after the US announced that peace envoy George Mitchell was postponing his scheduled visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories as a sign of the Obama administration’s anger at Israel’s refusal to stop building Jewish homes in East Jerusalem.

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has refused to draw a line under a crisis that erupted last week when, during a visit by US vice president Joe Biden, Israel announced plans for 1,600 new housing units in an Orthodox Jewish suburb beyond the pre-1967 border. Israel’s ambassador to the US has described the ensuing row as the worst between the US and Israel for 35 years.

Yesterday an Obama administration source told the Guardian that the White House and US state department were intent on pushing Israel into substantive peace talks with the Palestinians and would not shy away this time as they did when the last effort ended in embarrassing failure in September.

“No one gets anywhere by accusing each other. We are hoping to lay the foundations for negotiations,” the source said. In order to get negotiations under way, the US is demanding that Netanyahu cancel or freeze plans to build 1,600 planned Jewish homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem. But Netanyahu, speaking at a meeting of his own Likud party, showed no signs of backing down. “The building in Jerusalem, and in all other places, will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years,” he said.

The Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, expressed alarm about the extent of the confrontation. The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted the normally cool Oren, an academic-turned diplomat, as saying: “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 … a crisis of historic proportions.”

Oren was called to the state department last week in a rare rebuke for a diplomat from a country the US normally regards as one of its strongest allies.

The White House has steadily built up the heat on Israel over the last few days, with the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, berating Netanyahu in a 45-minute call on Friday and David Axelrod, the chief White House adviser, describing Israeli behaviour as an insult yesterday.

The US wants Israel not only to backtrack on the East Jerusalem building plans but to enter into talks with the Palestinians on substantive issues and not just talks about talks, as Israel wants. Washington also wants Israel to make gestures towards the Palestinians, such as releasing Palestinian prisoners and withdrawing more Israeli forces from Palestinian territory.

Originally published here

US vice-president appeals to Israel after Palestinians walk out over decision to build new homes in Jewish settlement

The US vice-president, Joe Biden, today attempted to salvage the Middle East peace talks after the Palestinians announced they were pulling out of a new round of indirect negotiations before they had begun.

The Palestinian move was in protest against Israel’s decision to build hundreds of new homes in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

The withdrawal from negotiations, announced in Cairo by Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, represents a major setback to months of diplomacy by the US administration prior to Biden’s visit to the region.

The US vice-president said an agreement would be “profoundly” in Israel’s interests and appealed to the Israeli government to make a serious attempt to reach peace with the Palestinians.

“The most important thing is for these talks to go forward, and go forward promptly, and go forward in good faith,” he said in a speech at Tel Aviv University.

“We can’t delay, because when progress is postponed, extremists exploit our differences.”

After strongly condemning the Israeli settlement expansion earlier in the week, Biden used today’s speech to praise the country, saying the US had “no better friend”.

But he stressed the need to end the conflict to restore to the Palestinians “the fundamental dignity and self-respect that their current predicament denies them”.

Yesterday, Moussa said he had been told by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that even the low-key process of “proximity talks” could not begin unless Israel stopped expanding its settlements.

“The Palestinian side is not ready to negotiate under the present circumstances,” Moussa said.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders have not held direct negotiations since Israel’s war in Gaza last year.

On Monday, the White House won agreement from the two sides to begin the indirect talks, hoping they would lead to face-to-face meetings.

The Palestinians had insisted there would be no direct talks unless Israel halted all settlement expansion, in line with the demands of the US administration and the “road map”, which remains the framework of peace talks.

But the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, leading a rightwing coalition government, offered only a temporary and partial curb to new building.

Then on Tuesday – hours after Biden met Israeli leaders – the Israeli interior ministry announced approval for 1,600 new apartments in Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

All settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.

Israel’s opposition Kadima party said it planned a no-confidence vote in the prime minister in parliament for “destroying” the Biden visit.

Yesterday, Biden emerged from talks with Abbas in Ramallah, on the occupied West Bank, and repeated his criticisms of the timing and substance of Israel’s announcement.

“It is incumbent on both parties to build an atmosphere of support for negotiations and not to complicate them,” he said.

“The decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust, the trust that we need right now in order to begin … profitable negotiations.”

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, said the Palestinians appreciated “the strong statement of condemnation” by the US administration.

Eli Yishai, the Israeli interior minister, apologised for the timing of the announcement, admitting it had caused Biden “real embarrassment”.

Originally published here

• 1,600 homes to be built in East Jerusalem settlement
• Vice-president says the deal undermines trust

Joe Biden, the US vice-president, condemned a plan by Israel to build 1,600 homes on occupied Palestinian land in an East Jerusalem settlement.

The Israeli interior ministry’s approval of the plan cast a cloud over a visit to the country by Biden just hours after he pledged strong support for the Israeli government.

In an unusually strong statement issued after he arrived 90 minutes late for a dinner with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said: “I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units.”

He said the blueprint for Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox settlement in an area of the West Bank annexed to Jerusalem, “undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions I’ve had in Israel”.

The approvals came just a day after the Israeli defence ministry announced that 112 apartments would be built in Beitar Illit, a settlement on the occupied West Bank. The new building comes at a delicate moment in the long-stalled peace process after Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to start indirect negotiations.

The interior ministry said the Ramat Shlomo approvals had been passed by the Jerusalem district planning committee. A spokeswoman said there were 60 days to appeal against the decision. Ramat Shlomo, built 15 years ago, is on land captured in the West Bank in 1967 and annexed to Israel in a move not recognised by the international community.

Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, who heads a religious party in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, said the timing of the plan’s approval was coincidental. “There was certainly no intention to provoke anyone and certainly not to come along and hurt the vice-president of the United States,” Yishai told Israel’s Channel One television.

“Final approval [for the project] will take another few months. I agree that the timing [of the announcement] should have been in another two or three weeks.”

Two years ago, when the Israeli government approved 1,300 homes in the same settlement, then US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, criticised the move as having a “negative effect” on peace talks.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the announcements were “destroying our efforts” in peace negotiations.

“With such an announcement, how can you build trust?” he said. “It’s a disastrous situation.”

Earlier in the day, Biden said Israel and the Palestinians needed to “take risks for peace”. But his talk of a “moment of opportunity” obscures a reality in which the two sides are a long way apart. Although the peace process has been under way for nearly two decades, there have been no direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders since Israel’s war in Gaza a year ago.

Palestinian officials refused to hold direct talks unless Israel halted all settlement construction, in line with the demands of the US administration and of the US road map. But Netanyahu, agreed only to a temporary, partial curb to settlement building. It did not include East Jerusalem, or public buildings, or homes where construction had already started.

In talks with Netanyahu, Biden appeared to focus not on the struggling peace process but on Iran, saying Washington was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “There is no space between the US and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security,” Biden said after their meeting.

“We are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” Biden said.

In private, he is also believed to have cautioned the Israeli government against any unilateral military strike on Iran, and to have tried to win Israeli support for the US administration’s policy, which is moving towards sanctions against Iran.

Netanyahu made clear the Israeli government hoped for a tougher sanction regime against Iran. “The stronger those sanctions are, the more likely it will be that the Iranian regime will have to chose between advancing its nuclear programme and advancing the future of its own permanence,” he said. Netanyahu frequently cites the need to address Iran’s nuclear ambitions as his priority in government and Israeli leaders have pointedly not ruled out a military option.

Originally published here