Jerusalem, March 27: Israel insisted on Friday it would not change its policy of building homes in East Jerusalem, but vowed to seek agreement with the Obama administration on how to renew stalled peace talks with Palestinians.
The statement on Jerusalem came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened senior cabinet ministers to consider confidence-building steps for reviving negotiations, as proposed by U.S. officials while Netanyahu was in Washington this week.
“Israeli construction policy in Jerusalem has remained the same for 42 years and isn’t changing,” a written statement from Netanyahu’s spokesman, Nir Hefez, said, suggesting Israeli cabinet ministers would not budge on that particular policy.
This month’s diplomatic impasse drew a surge of rocket and mortar attacks from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which Israel answered with airstrikes.
Israeli tanks advanced into Gaza on Friday after the worst clash with Palestinian fighters in 14 months killed two on each side, and Palestinians reported new casualties in the fighting.
The Obama administration has been pressing Israel to halt settlement construction in East Jerusalem, an issue that created new friction this month when a plan to build 1,600 more housing units was published while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting.
Sparring over settlements risks jeopardising Israel’s vital ties with the United States, its biggest ally. Yet Netanyahu has to balance these concerns with the possibility his pro-settler coalition may fall apart should he bow to U.S. demands.
Friday’s cabinet meeting adjourned without decisions.
“The prime minister set further discussion in the forum for the coming days, as well as continued contacts with the U.S. administration in order to reach an agreed path for getting the diplomatic process moving,” Hefez said.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in a 1967 war, and annexed it as part of its capital in a move not recognised internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as capital of a future state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
GAZA THREAT
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also insists settlement must cease totally for peace talks stalled since December 2008 to resume. He faces domestic opposition to diplomacy from the Hamas Islamists who control Gaza and spurn the Jewish state.
The Gaza front saw its worst violence on Friday since the 2008/2009 war as Hamas members and other Palestinians attacked Israeli troops who crossed the border to dismantle a mine. Two soldiers and two gunmen died. Israel threatened to punish Hamas.
Palestinian sources said five Israeli tanks and two armoured bulldozers advanced into the Gaza Strip, firing, towards the town of Khan Younis in the centre of the narrow coastal enclave.
The Gaza-base militant group Popular Resistance Committees said one of its fighters was critically wounded by tank shelling east of the town. Palestinian sources reported Israeli helicopters and unmanned military drones in the skies.
“We have been used to seeing breakaway (Palestinian) groups doing the firing, and Hamas trying to calm things down. Possibly it is loosening its grip, for all sorts of reasons,” Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Channel Two television.
“Should that indeed prove to be the case, then there will also be ramifications for Hamas,” he said, without elaborating.
“We have no interest in returning the region to what was in the past, but we have no intention of forsaking our duty to protect the communities outside Gaza.”
The West has long objected to Israeli construction of Jewish settlements in land Palestinians seek for a state, and the issue again dogged Netanyahu’s talks with President Barack Obama on Wednesday as they sought a way to renew Middle East diplomacy.
Hefez said Netanyahu and Obama had reached a “list of understandings” in the talks on Wednesday, although some disagreements remained.
He said they had an understanding “based on the principle that on the one hand construction policy in Jerusalem doesn’t change, and on the other, Israel is ready to take steps to move the diplomatic process”.
Later Hefez clarified that he had not meant to say Washington had agreed to Israel building in East Jerusalem, but to stress Israel’s own policy on the issue.
In a statement Hefez said what he had told the radio “was related only to Israel’s position and did not relate at all to the American position”.
——Agencies