Numerous Housing Units Approved for Jerusalem Suburb

More than 2,000 additional housing units have been approved for a Jerusalem suburb, in a move sure to set off another firestorm of protest in the international community.

The Interior Ministry’s planning committee gave its approval Wednesday for a project to build 2,610 new homes in a suburb of Jerusalem located in an area restored to the city during the 1967 Six Day-War. As with all of Judea and Samaria, any part of Jerusalem seized by Jordan during the 1948 War of Independence and held until 1967 is claimed by the Palestinian Authority for its hoped-for state.

In particular, the PA has claimed the parts of Jerusalem that were occupied by Jordan to be used for a capital of that state. The international community and leftist organizations support the claim. But Israel’s decision to allow more construction in its capital city is about the needs of its citizens, and not about the Palestinian Authority, Housing Minister Ariel Attias asserted Wednesday.

Attias said construction in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, is the norm.

“Who didn’t build in Jerusalem from the late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak? All we want is to promote building for people so that they will have a roof over their heads,” Attias said.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on Tuesday slammed the Netanyahu government’s decision to approve long-needed housing projects in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. On Tuesday, the Housing Ministry announced plans to issue tenders next week for construction of 3,000 new homes in the cities of Karnei Shomron, Efrat and Givat Ze’ev.

All three are located in areas with a large Israeli presence that would remain with the Jewish State regardless of any outcome in final status negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

“We are deeply disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action,” Nuland said. “These repeated announcements and plans of new construction run counter to the cause of peace.”

JNN News Commentary

Once again, absolutely no mention is made of the recent successful move by the Palestinian Authority to establish illegitimate, Observer State status at the U.N. This crafty strategy on the part of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, supported by all but a handful of UN nations, broke the 1993 Oslo Accord agreements signed by both PA representatives and Israel that any statehood status for the Palestinians would be reached through negotiations between the two entities.

How can it be no international outcry has gone up against the Palestinian Authority for its obdurate refusal to display the slightest concessions towards advancing peace with Israel? There has been no outcry for the PA’s outrageous demands of the Jewish state towards that end at every juncture, or for its latest U.N. move that has been as “provocative,”—in the language of Nuland—as “counter to the cause of peace,” as any expansion of legitimate, decades old, Jewish communities on the part of Israel?