JERUSALEM: Israeli Cabinet ministers lined up Sunday behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to approve the construction of hundreds of new apartments in West Bank settlements, defiantly shrugging off a rare and harsh public rebuke from top ally Washington.
Israeli officials announced the new construction on Friday, while suggesting they might halt some building in the West Bank in exchange for overtures from the Arab world.
But while Israel portrayed its willingness to consider a building slowdown as a concession toward peacemaking, the proposed new construction flouted US demands for a complete settlement freeze. And it drew swift denunciation from the Palestinians, who have conditioned the resumption of peace talks on a halt to all settlement activity.
Israel says a curtailment in construction would not apply to the new housing units, the 2,500 units currently under construction, or to East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim for the capital of a future state. Israel captured that sector of the city in 1967 and Netanyahu’s coalition objects to any territorial concessions there.
If Netanyahu hoped to defuse a coalition crisis by linking a possible building slowdown to the approval of new building projects, then the tactic appeared to work.
The head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, Eli Yishai, spoke supportively of a “strategic pause” in construction. And Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz called Netanyahu’s move “well-conceived,” adding that no agreement had been reached with Washington on a construction freeze.
Netanyahu pointedly did not address the issue in prepared remarks before the weekly Cabinet meeting.
On Friday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the US regretted Israel’s plans to approve additional settlement construction. “As the president has said before, the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop,” Gibbs said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s foreign minister abruptly called off a visit to Israel this week, an Israeli spokesman said, amid a feud over a Swedish newspaper article and a growing gulf between Israel and the international community over West Bank settlement construction.
Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has called off a trip to Israel planned for this Friday, according to Yigal Palmor, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Palmor, who would not comment on a possible reason for the move, said Sweden informed Israel’s embassy in Stockholm of the decision on Friday.
Sweden holds the rotating European Union presidency. But the cancellation also followed a diplomatic feud between Israel and Sweden over an article in a Swedish tabloid that accused Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs from dead Palestinians and suggested a connection with an international organ trafficking ring run by Jews.
