Madrid, March 12: The EU must be firm in its opposition to the Israeli government’s decision to approve the construction of new illegal units for mainly radical Jewish settlers in Palestinian East Jerusalem, Spain’s Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said Thursday.
“We must be very demanding on this issue,” he told a parliamentary commission.
Moratinos, a former European Union envoy to the Middle East, said he spoke to his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Liberman on Thursday to express his concern of the approval of the construction of new homes which he said jeopardised chances for peace in the region.
Spain currently holds the rotating six-month presidency of the EU.
Israel said on Tuesday it would build 1,600 new homes for illegal Jewish settlers in Palestinian East Jerusalem, and the announcement coincided with a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden to the holy city.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly apologised to the vice president on Thursday in a bid to defuse the row over illegal settlements, which prompted a Palestinian boycott of indirect peace talks.
Biden welcomed that but again criticised Israel’s decision to approve construction of the settlements.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) also citicised Thursday the Israeli government’s decision.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who is currently the head of the global body of Muslim nations, said the move was an obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Wade expressed “grave concern following the decision by the Israeli government to authorise the building of new homes in east Jerusalem,” a statement from his office said.
Jordan king to Biden: settlements threaten peace
Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Thursday told visiting Biden that Israel’s new settlements plans threaten peace efforts and could lead to more regional violence.
“The king renewed Jordan’s condemnation of Israel’s decision to build new settlements in east Jerusalem,” a palace statement quoted the king as telling Biden at a meeting.
He said “such unilateral actions, which are internationally rejected, threaten the peace process and put the entire region at risk of getting into a new cycle of conflict,” according to the statement.
“Achieving peace in the Middle East requires a leading US role. The entire world is paying the price for the troubled peace process,” said the king, whose country, a key US ally, signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.
Israel army seals off West Bank for 48 hours
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the army to seal off the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank for 48 hours until midnight on Saturday, an army spokesman said.
The action was taken “for security reasons” including a risk of attacks, the spokesman said Friday. The area was sealed off at midnight on Thursday.
Israeli police have also said they would bar Muslim men under the age of 50 from prayers on Friday at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites.
The Israeli army said some medical and religious workers, teachers, journalists and others would be exempted from the West Bank closure.
Since the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, Israel has usually sealed off the West Bank ahead of major holidayss.
Israeli airstrikes target Gaza, several wounded
Israeli aircraft hit two areas in southern Gaza Strip early Friday, wounding several people, the Israeli army and Palestinian witnesses said.
In the first strike, they blew up a metal workshop in the town of Khan Yunis, and in the second, targeted a smuggling tunnel in the border town of Rafah, the Israeli army said.
Witnesses said several people were injured.
The army said the strikes were in response to a resistance rocket attack Thursday that hit an empty workshop on a kibbutz in southern Israel, causing no casualties.
Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.
Human rights groups, both international and Israeli, slammed Israel’s siege of Gaza, branding it “collective punishment.”
—Agencies