The U.S. State Dept. branded advancement of a project for 2,610 homes for Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem as “poison,” a label totally rejected by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.
The statement by State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki exposes the total hypocrisy of the Obama administration’s stated policy that Israel and the Palestinian Authority should reach an agreement through negotiations.
She charged that the project for new homes in southern Jerusalem “poison the atmosphere not only with the Palestinians, but also with the very Arab governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to build relations, and call into question Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.”
The key words are a “peaceful negotiated settlement.”
President Barack Obama has repeatedly said that Jews living in parts of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinian Authority are “illegitimate” and ”illegal.”
He and his “straight man,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, have claimed that the United States will not try to force an agreement on a “take it or leave it basis,” but that is exactly what they do with such statements that every “illegal” home “poisons” the atmosphere.
The construction project indeed poisons the “peace plan,” which is a misnomer for a ploy to grant the Arabs world everything they want without negotiation – Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley, half of Jerusalem and mass immigration of millions of Arabs whose only connection to Israel is that they are third, fourth, and fifth generation descendants of permanent “refugees” created by the United Nations for the exact purpose of holding on them as demographic weapon to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with President Obama on Wednesday hours after Peace Now leaked the news that another bureaucratic obstacle has been removed for the construction project in the Givat HaMatos neighborhood, announced two years ago,
More than one-third of the proposed homes are slated for Arabs in the adjacent Beit Safata neighborhood. After Psaki’s condemnation and the White House’s objections that Jews are “stoking tensions” by the purchase this week of more buildings from Arabs in the Silwan area of eastern Jerusalem, Netanyahu said, “Arabs in Jerusalem freely buy apartments, and nobody says that is forbidden. I will also not say that Jews cannot buy property in Jerusalem. There cannot be discrimination between Jews and Arabs.”
Barkat said Thursday, that the Givat HaMatos project, rather than “poisoning” anything is a “necessary” step and that he will not be part of any policy that discriminates between the rights of Jews and Arabs to build in all of Jerusalem.
The Obama administration’s policy, which follows the lead of the Palestinian Authority and the Saudi 2002 Plan, does not object to Arab building in parts of Jerusalem claimed by the PA. It only objects to construction for Jews.
Some of the headlines of the American criticism are misleading are simply wrong.
One large Israeli news site proclaimed, “US-Israel Ties in Crisis Over East Jerusalem Building Plans,” but the disagreement, no matter how harsh Psaki’s words, is the same tempest in the same teapot that has brewed for years.
The real “crisis” is that the Palestinian Authority, Peace Now and the U.S. State Dept. are beside themselves because of their failure to hijack the “peace process” that has been in the works for more than 20 years and which has achieved agreement after agreement that the Palestinian Authority has reneged.
Blatant violations include worsening incitement for terror and the establishment of a Palestinian Authority army, under the guise of a “police force,” but Mahmoud Abbas’ fatal mistake was to ditch the entire premise of the process that a final status agreement is to be reached through “negotiations.” Israel has turned the other cheek dozens of times, but the Netanyahu government has held hits red line concerning Jerusalem remaining united.