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 US 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.
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 to Reuters, 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.”
Meanwhile, Iran attacked Israel’s settlement plans in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday, saying Muslims around the world needed to take action.
“Expansion of Israeli settlements, destruction of Islamic and Christian sites and wide-scale construction of new synagogues ... show the Zionist plans to accelerate Judaization of East Jerusalem and unfortunately it is approved by American officials,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in comments reported on Iranian state radio.
“This has raised the alarm for all people around the world and doubled the need for Muslim and other countries to act seriously,” he said, adding that the 22-nation Arab League should take a strong stance at its meeting in Libya this weekend.
In a separate development, two Israeli soldiers were killed on Friday in an explosion east of the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, Al Arabiya news channel reported.
The Dubai-based channel said an Israeli patrol along the frontline was targeted with a bomb, and that a gunfight followed the explosion. Two Palestinians were killed in the clash, it said.
In the Syrian capital of Damascus, tens of thousands of Syrians and Palestinians gathered Friday for a government-organized “march of anger” against Israeli construction.
Protesters waved Syrian and Palestinian flags and pictures of Hamas leaders as they shouted anti-Israel slogans, and senior Hamas official Mohammed Nazzal condemned what he called Israel’s “brutal aggression” on holy sites.
