Israel Plans 1,000 Housing Units in East Jerusalem
New York Times ISABEL KERSHNER The plan comes as the United States attempts to renew a freeze in settlement construction and get stalled peace negotiations back on track.
Boston Globe Israel to go ahead with East Jerusalem housing
The move will likely complicate Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's current visit to the United States for talks about reviving stalled peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
Israel Advances Housing Plan
Wall Street Journal: Israel has advanced plans for nearly 1,300 new housing units in predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem, dealing yet another setback to American-led peace efforts as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the U.S.
Netanyahu is heckled in U.S.; new housing plan announced By Cain Burdeau, Associated PressIsrael to build more homes in East Jerusalem
Settlers got sweet land deals in east Jerusalem
... Some of the properties passed on to the settler groups once belonged to Jews but fell into state hands. Arab families had since built on the land but were evicted from the properties when settler groups seized control.
Other properties belonged to Arab residents whom the state deemed to be "absentee owners."
In one case, a 40,000 square feet (3,660 square meter) building just outside the Old City was sold to Jewish settlers in October 2006 for $190,000 - a tiny fraction of its market price. Also that year, an 11,000 square feet (1,057 square meter) building in the Old City was sold for of $69,000, less than the cost of a tiny one-bedroom apartment elsewhere in the city. Other deals featured similar low prices.
Encouraging Jews to live all over Jerusalem has been a common policy of Israeli governments for decades. Jewish neighborhoods built around the outskirts of east Jerusalem are home to more than 180,000 Israelis today.
But the purchase of property in the heart of Palestinian sections raises tough questions.
"This has tremendous implications on both the political future and also on (Jerusalem's) current stability," said Orly Noy of Ir Amim, an Israeli group that supports coexistence in Jerusalem. Ir Amim was not involved in the court battle to obtain the documents but closely followed developments.
"The Israeli government is officially obligated to resolve the (Mideast) conflict through negotiations, but we find out at the same time - left-wing and right-wing governments alike have been cooperating with organizations whose sole goal is to prevent those very same negotiations from succeeding," she said.
On the other hand, if borders are agreed on, a small number of Israelis in a few dozen buildings on the Palestinian side would not likely scuttle implementation of a peace accord. Israel removed 8,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 when it withdrew.
The documents were released to anti-settlement activist Dror Etkes after a three-year court battle with the Israel Land Administration, which oversees almost all the country's land.
Etkes wanted the government agency to detail its deals with two shadowy settler groups, Elad and Ateret Cohanim, which have helped move Jews into Arab sections areas of east Jerusalem.
The documents refer to 11 properties that were leased or sold from 2003 to 2008 - by Israeli governments who were, at some points, negotiating with Palestinians to strike a Mideast peace deal.
Etkes said he believed the state was withholding information on other deals because nearly two decades ago, a government-appointed commission identified 68 land transactions involving the state and the two settler groups.
All the properties referred to in the court documents lie in the Old City, and the nearby valley of Silwan, where some 2,000 Jewish settlers are wedged in among about 30,000 Palestinian residents. Violence is common. In September Palestinians rioted for days in east Jerusalem after an armed guard working for Jewish settlers shot dead an Arab man in unclear circumstances.
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