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Israel shuts Palestinian map office citing sovereignty breach

Israeli border police officers stand guard outside the building where Israeli security officers closed a Palestinian map office complying with an Israeli police order to close the office, in the Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina March 14, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel ordered the closure of an office in Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday as it was suspected of being funded by the Palestinian Authority and involved with monitoring the sale of Palestinian property to Jews, police said.

Israel forbids any official activity by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem, saying it breaches Israel’s sovereignty over the city, which it has declared its indivisible capital, a move not recognized internationally.

Israel’s internal security minister said the office, which drafts maps, was “monitoring and documenting” Palestinian-owned land in East Jerusalem, scrutinizing changes Israel has made to the terrain and passing on the names of landowners planning to sell.

“Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan ordered the closure of the Palestinian map office which has resumed operations in Beit Hanina in Jerusalem,” a police statement said.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat called the closure a “provocative act” and part of an effort by Israel “to erase any Palestinian presence in the city”.

However, in a statement Erdan said: “The Palestinian map office is part of the PA’s plan to harm our sovereignty in Jerusalem and to threaten Arabs selling real estate to Jews in the city. I will continue to act firmly to prevent any Palestinian government foothold in Jerusalem.”

The office, in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood in the northern part of Jerusalem, is run by geographer Khalil Tafakji. Police said that a 65-year-old Jerusalem resident was arrested and many documents and computers were seized.

The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, together with the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israel occupied East Jerusalem after capturing it in a 1967 war, a move not recognized internationally.

Since annexing East Jerusalem in 1980, Israel has greatly expanded its presence in that part of the city, building settlements and major pieces of infrastructure. Private Jewish groups have also sought to buy up Palestinian homes in eastern neighborhoods to expand the Jewish presence in the east.

(Reporting by Ammar Awad, Writing by Ori Lewis, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Netanyahu blasts U.N. ‘hypocrisy’, Australian PM opposes ‘one-sided resolutions’

By Colin Packham

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull offered a staunch defense of Israel on Wednesday, criticizing the United Nations and vowing never to support “one-sided resolutions” calling for an end to Israeli settlement building on occupied land.

Turnbull welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday as the first Israeli prime minister to visit Australia and reiterated Australia’s support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

However, he also made it clear Australia would not support any resolutions such as the one approved by the United Nations Security Council in December calling for an end to Israeli settlement building on land occupied by Palestinians.

“My government will not support one-sided resolutions criticizing Israel of the kind recently adopted by the U.N Security Council and we deplore the boycott campaigns designed to delegitimise the Jewish state,” Turnbull wrote in an editorial in The Australian newspaper.

The U.N. resolution was approved in the final weeks of Barack Obama’s administration, which broke with a long tradition of shielding Israel diplomatically and chose not to wield its veto power.

“Australia has been courageously willing to puncture U.N. hypocrisy more than once,” Netanyahu said.

“The U.N. is capable of many absurdities and I think it’s important that you have straightforward and clear-eyed countries like Australia that often bring it back to earth,” he said after meeting Turnbull.

Israel has long pursued a policy of constructing Jewish settlements on territory it captured in a 1967 war with its Arab neighbors including the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Most countries view such activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal and an obstacle to peace but Israel disagrees, citing a biblical connection to the land.

Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations has said the United States still supports a two-state solution to the conflict, although new U.S. President Donald Trump has also said he is open to new ways to achieve peace.

The two-state solution has long been the bedrock of the international community’s policy for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians but Trump’s apparent loosening of that main tenet, at a joint news conference with Netanyahu last week, stunned the international community.

“We support an outcome which has two states where Israelis, the Israeli people, the Palestinian people live side-by-side as a result of direct negotiations between them,” Turnbull told reporters in Sydney.

Netanyahu said any solution would need Palestine to recognize Israel, which would also have security control of the territories.

While in Australia, Netanyahu is scheduled to sign agreements fostering closer economic and defense cooperation.

(Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Paul Tait)

Netanyahu opposes Palestinian state, Israeli minister says ahead of U.S. visit

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) stands next to Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump during their meeting in New York, U.S.

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Benjamin Netanyahu opposes a Palestinian state, a senior Israeli cabinet member said on Monday, but left it unclear whether the prime minister would say that publicly in talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington this week.

Netanyahu has never explicitly abandoned his conditional support for a future Palestine, and his spokesman did not respond immediately to a request to comment on Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan’s remarks.

Erdan belongs to Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, whose leading members have often espoused a harder line than the prime minister himself.

“I think all members of the security cabinet, and foremost the prime minister, oppose a Palestinian state,” Erdan told Army Radio after the forum met on Sunday on the eve of Netanyahu’s departure for Washington for talks with Trump on Wednesday.

“No one thinks in the next few years that a Palestinian state is something that, God forbid, might or should happen,” he said in the interview.

But asked if Netanyahu would voice opposition to statehood on camera when he meets Trump, Erdan said: “The prime minister has to weigh things according to what he feels in the meeting and the positions he encounters there. No one knows what the positions of the president and his staff are.”

Palestinians seek to establish a state in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured those areas in a 1967 war and pulled its troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005.

NUANCED

Citing Israeli settlement activity, Palestinian leaders and the former U.S. administration of Barack Obama have questioned Netanyahu’s commitment, which he first made in a 2009 policy speech, to the so-called two-state solution to decades of conflict.

“It is not only their statements – what the government of the extreme right in Israel does on the ground prevents any chance of the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Wasel Abu Youssef, an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said of Erdan’s comments.

Since Trump took office last month, Netanyahu has approved construction of 6,000 settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, drawing international condemnation which the White House did not join.

In recent days, however, the Trump administration has taken a more nuanced position, saying building new settlements or expanding existing ones may not be helpful in achieving peace.

Netanyahu has spelled out terms for a future Palestine: its demilitarization, the stationing of Israeli troops in its territory and Palestinian recognition of Israel as the “nation-state” of the Jewish people.

Last month, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said Netanyahu, in a closed-door meeting with Likud ministers, coined a new term “Palestinian state-minus” to describe his vision of limited Palestinian sovereignty.

Under interim peace deals, Palestinians, who number about 2.5 million in the West Bank, currently exercise limited self-rule in the territory, where some 350,000 Israeli settlers live.

Some members of Netanyahu’s government have called for the annexation of parts of the West Bank, a demand he has resisted.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Maayan Lubell and Janet Lawrence)

Israel wraps up illegal outpost evacuation, promises new settlement

An Israeli settler touches the floor of a synagogue after it was evacuated during the second day of an operation by Israeli forces to evict the illegal outpost of Amona in the occupied West Bank

By Rami Amichay

AMONA, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli police dragged nationalist youths out of a barricaded synagogue on Thursday, completing the forced evacuation of an illegal outpost in the West Bank even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to build evicted families a new settlement.

Some 100 youngsters protesting against the removal of some 300 settlers from Amona, an outpost built without Israeli government authorization, kicked at police who used a high-pressure hose and a wooden pole to batter down sheet metal and furniture blocking the entrances to the synagogue.

The teenagers painted a Nazi swastika on a synagogue wall next to a slogan denouncing the police.

The evacuation began on Wednesday, when most of the families that settled in Amona were removed. But the youths holed up in the synagogue overnight.

Police, announcing that Amona had been cleared, said some 60 officers were slightly hurt in the two-day operation. Hospitals reported that at least four protesters had been treated for injuries.

Amona, built in 1995, was the largest of scores of outposts erected in the West Bank without formal approval. Israel’s Supreme Court ruled last November that it must be evacuated because it stands on privately-owned Palestinian land.

NETANYAHU PLEDGE

In a statement late on Wednesday and again in a speech in the West Bank on Thursday, Netanyahu said a new settlement would be built for Amona’s families and that a committee would be set up to locate a site.

“We will work to have it happen as soon as possible,” he said, speaking in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

Once constructed, it will be the first new settlement built in the West Bank since 1999. Construction in existing settlements has raised to 350,000 the number of Israelis living in the territory, which was captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Another 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem, also seized in that conflict.

Most countries consider all Israeli settlements to be illegal. Israel disagrees, citing historical and political links to the land – which the Palestinians also assert – as well as security interests.

Since Donald Trump took office as U.S. president on Jan. 20, Israel has announced plans for almost 6,000 more settlement homes in the West Bank, drawing European and Palestinian condemnation but no criticism from the White House.

Trump, a Republican, has signaled he could be more accommodating toward settlements than his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, which Israeli forces and settlers left in 2005, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Israel lifts restrictions on building more homes in East Jerusalem

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told senior ministers he is lifting restrictions on settlement building in East Jerusalem, a statement said on Sunday, immediately after the city’s municipal government approved permits for the building of hundreds of new homes in the area.

“There is no longer a need to coordinate construction in the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. We can build where we want and as much as we want,” the statement quoted Netanyahu as saying, adding that he also intended to allow the start of building in the West Bank.

“My vision is to enact sovereignty over all the settlements,” the statement also said, pointing to Netanyahu’s apparent bid to win greater support from settlers and appeal to a right-wing coalition partner.

Netanyahu told the ministers of the move at a meeting where they also decided unanimously to postpone discussing a bill proposing the Israeli annexation of the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim, home to 40,000 Israelis near Jerusalem.

A brief statement issued after the discussion by the ministerial forum known as the Security Cabinet, said work on the bill would be delayed until after Netanyahu meets the new U.S. President, Donald Trump.

Netanyahu held his first phone conversation with the president on Sunday, saying afterwards that the conversation had been “very warm” and that he had been invited to a meeting with Trump in Washington in February.

“Many matters face us. The Israeli-Palestinian issue, the situation in Syria, the Iranian threat,” Netanyahu said in remarks broadcast at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting.

Meanwhile the housing projects approved by the Jerusalem municipality on Sunday are on land that the Palestinians seek as part of a future state and had been taken off the agenda in December at Netanyahu’s request to avoid further censure from Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

However, Israel’s right wing believes that Trump’s attitude towards settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — areas Israel captured in the 1967 war — will be far more supportive than that of Obama.

Jerusalem’s City Hall approved the building permits for more than 560 units in the urban settlements of Pisgat Zeev, Ramat Shlomo and Ramot, areas annexed to Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement that the eight years of the Obama administration had been “difficult with pressure … to freeze construction” but that Israel was now entering a new era.

The Palestinians denounced the move. “We strongly condemn the Israeli decision to approve the construction,” Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters.

In its final weeks, the Obama administration angered the Israeli government by withholding a traditional U.S. veto of an anti-settlement resolution at the United Nations Security Council, enabling the measure to pass.

Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, echoed his condemnation of the world body over its treatment of Israel at her Senate confirmation hearing last week.

Before taking over as president, Trump also pledged to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and has nominated as new U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who is seen as a supporter of settlements.

Israel views all Jerusalem as its capital, but most of the world considers its final status a matter for peace negotiations. The Palestinians have said that an embassy move would kill any prospect for peace. Negotiations broke down in 2014.

Commentators in Israel have said it is too early to tell what Trump’s policy on these matters will actually be although the White House said on Sunday it was in the early stages of talks to fulfill Trump’s pledge.

“We are at the very beginning stages of even discussing this subject,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement.

Most countries consider settlement activity illegal and an obstacle to peace. Israel disagrees, citing a biblical, historical and political connection to the land — which the Palestinians also claim — as well as security interests.

(Additional Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by David Goodman, Greg Mahlich)

Israel postpones vote on new East Jerusalem homes before Kerry speech

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel pulled back from approving hundreds of new homes for Israelis in annexed East Jerusalem on Wednesday before a speech in which the U.S. Secretary of State was to give further voice to international opposition to settlement building.

The projects, in areas Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and which Palestinians seek as part of a future state, are part of building activity the U.N. Security Council demanded an end to on Friday in a resolution made possible by a U.S. abstention.

John Kerry will discuss Washington’s withholding of its veto when he delivers a speech at the State Department at 11 a.m. ET (1600 GMT) laying out his vision for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a senior State Department official told reporters on Tuesday.

With applications for 492 building permits in the urban settlements of Ramot and Ramat Shlomo on its agenda, members of Jerusalem city hall’s Planning and Building committee said a planned vote was cancelled at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request.

The panel’s chairman, Meir Turgeman, said at the session that Netanyahu was concerned approval would have given Kerry “ammunition before the speech”.

A spokesman for the Israeli leader declined immediate comment.

Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called on Israel “to take the high ground and declare a cessation of settlement activities, including East Jerusalem, so we can give the peace process the chance it deserves by the resumption of meaningful negotiations”.

“SHAMEFUL”

Washington’s move at the United Nations broke a longstanding policy of diplomatic shielding of Israel by the United States. Condemned by Israel as “shameful”, it was widely seen as a parting shot by President Barack Obama against Netanyahu and his pro-settlement policies.

The two leaders have had a rocky relationship, divided over the decades-old Israeli policy of building Jewish settlements in occupied territory as well as on how to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.

Washington considers the settlement activity illegitimate and most countries view it as an obstacle to peace. Israel disagrees, citing a biblical, historical and political connection to the land – which the Palestinians also claim – as well as security interests.

Some 570,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem amid mounting international concern that a two-state solution to the dispute is in jeopardy, with peace talks stalled since 2014.

“The prime minister said that while he supports construction in Jerusalem, we don’t have to inflame the situation any further,” Hanan Rubin, a member of the Jerusalem municipal committee told Reuters, citing Kerry’s upcoming speech.

The panel meets regularly and the building projects could come up for a vote at a future session.

Since learning last week of Kerry’s planned speech, Israeli officials have been concerned he might use the address to lay out parameters for a Middle East peace deal.

Netanyahu’s aides are confident Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration will likely ignore any Obama principles and pay no heed to the U.N. resolution. But they fear Kerry’s remarks will put Israel on the defensive and prompt other countries to apply pressure.

Trump tweeted his opposition to the U.S. decision to withhold a veto and lobbied Egypt, an original sponsor of the resolution, to drop plans to bring it to a vote last Thursday.

He has pledged to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its capital – a status that is not recognised internationally. And he has appointed his lawyer, who has raised funds for a major Jewish settlement in the West Bank, as the new ambassador.

“Who’s Obama? He’s history,” Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said on Army Radio on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; editing by John Stonestreet)

Israel pressing ahead with settlements after U.N. vote

Houses are seen in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim as the Palestinian village of Al-Eizariya is seen in the background

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Jerusalem municipality is due to act on Wednesday on requests to construct hundreds of new homes for Israelis in areas that Israel captured in 1967 and annexed to the city, drawing fresh criticism from the United States that settlement activity puts Middle East peace-making at risk.

Israel is still fuming over the resolution approved last Friday by the United Nations Security Council that demands an end to settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he was aware of press reports about plans for more settlement building.

“We would hope that the U.N. Security Council resolution would serve as a wake-up call, a call to action, an attempt to alert both sides, but certainly Israel, that its actions with regards to settlement activity are a detriment to moving forward with a two-state solution,” Toner told a news briefing.

Israel described as “shameful” the decision by the United States to abstain in the vote rather than wield its veto. The Obama administration is a strong opponent of the settlements.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is to make remarks on Wednesday regarding Middle East peace and discuss steps needed to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An agenda published by Jerusalem City Hall listed applications for at least 390 new homes whose approval looks certain to intensify international and Palestinian opposition to the Israeli settlement-building.

The Municipal Planning and Construction panel usually meets on Wednesdays; the permit requests were filed before the Security Council resolution.

Settler leaders and their supporters have been urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step up construction in East Jerusalem, accusing him of having slowed the pace last year because of international pressure.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on Tuesday that 1,506 housing units for Israelis have already been approved in East Jerusalem this year, compared with 395 in 2015.

The Jerusalem municipality said in a statement on Tuesday it would “continue to develop the capital according to zoning and building codes, without prejudice, for the benefit of all residents.”

Israel considers all of Jerusalem its united capital, a stance not supported by the international community. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they seek to establish in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

Some 570,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, in settlements that most countries consider to be illegal and the United States terms illegitimate. Israel disputes that, citing historical, political and Biblical links to the areas, as well as security concerns.

The new U.N. resolution changes nothing on the ground between Israel and the Palestinians and will probably be all but ignored by the incoming U.S. administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

However, Israeli officials fear it could spur further Palestinian moves against Israel in international forums.

A U.S. official said after Friday’s vote that Washington’s decision to abstain was prompted mainly by concern that Israel would continue to accelerate settlement construction and put at risk a two-state solution of the conflict with the Palestinians.

The U.S.-backed peace talks have been stalled since 2014.

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by Gareth Jones and Leslie Adler)

U.N. chief slams Israel over settlement plans in wake of Quartet report

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon sharply criticized a decision by Israel to advance plans to build hundreds of units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem just days after world powers called on Israel to stop its settlement policy, his spokesman said on Tuesday.

“This raises legitimate questions about Israel’s long-term intentions, which are compounded by continuing statements of some Israeli ministers calling for the annexation of the West Bank,” Ban’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Ban was “deeply disappointed” that Israel’s announcement followed the release of a report on Friday by the “Quartet” sponsoring the stalled Middle East peace process – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

The long-awaited report said Israel should stop building settlements, denying Palestinian development and designating land for exclusive Israeli use that Palestinians seek for a future state.

The Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war. The last round of peace talks broke down in April 2014 and Israeli-Palestinian violence has surged in recent months.

The Quartet report said at least 570,000 Israelis are living in the settlements.

Ban “reiterates that settlements are illegal under international law and urges the Government of Israel to halt and reverse such decisions in the interest of peace and a just final status agreement,” Dujarric said.

Diplomats said the Quartet report was not as hard-hitting as expected after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set out to ensure the document was softened.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by David Gregorio)

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