Israel rejected concerted criticism from Europe over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to expand settlement building after the United Nations’ de facto recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Britain, France and Sweden summoned the Israeli ambassadors in their respective capitals to hear deep disapproval of the plan to erect 3,000 more homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Ahead of a Netanyahu visit this week, Germany, considered Israel’s closest ally in Europe, urged it to refrain from expanding settlements, and Russia said it viewed the Israeli moves with serious concern.
Angered by the UN General Assembly’s upgrading on Thursday of the Palestinians’ status in the world body from «observer entity» to «non-member state», Israel said the next day it would build the new dwellings for settlers.
Such projects in the past, on land Israel captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians seek for a future state, have routinely drawn almost pro forma world condemnation.
But in a dramatic shift that Netanyahu would have certainly realized would raise the alarm among Palestinians and in world capitals, his pro-settler government also ordered «preliminary zoning and planning work» for thousands of housing units in areas including the so-called «E1» zone east of Jerusalem.
Such construction in the barren hills of E1 – still on the drawing board and never put into motion in the face of opposition from its main ally, the United States – could bisect the West Bank, cut off Palestinians from Jerusalem and further dim their hopes for a contiguous state.
The settlement plan, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, would deal «an almost fatal blow» to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Britain made clear it would not support strong Israeli retaliation over the UN vote, which Palestinians sought after peace talks collapsed in 2010 in a dispute over settlement building.
«We deplore the recent Israeli decision to build 3,000 new housing units and unfreeze development in the E1 block,» a Foreign Office spokesman said. «We have called on the Israeli government to reverse the decision.»
But a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron played down talk of recalling Britain’s ambassador in Tel Aviv.
«We are not proposing to do anything further at this stage,» the spokesman said. «We are continuing to have conversations with the Israeli government and others.»
France expressed «serious concerns» to the Israeli ambassador, reminding him that settlement building in occupied territories was illegal and an «obstacle» to reviving peace talks with the Palestinians.
A French Foreign Ministry official, responding to reports Paris might bring its Tel Aviv envoy home, said: «There are other ways in which we can express our disapproval.»
Source: Buenos Aires Herald