Sharon Asks More Housing for Jews in East Jerusalem

Housing Minister Ariel Sharon on Monday outlined wide-ranging plans to house thousands of Jews in Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

Sharon, confirming persistent newspaper reports and official leaks, named four Arab neighborhoods where the government is acquiring land and planning housing for Jews.

“It is in the government’s plans to strengthen Jewish settlement in City of David (Silwan), as on the Mount of Olives,” Sharon told reporters after meeting Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek to discuss disagreements over the plans. “We view with great importance Jewish life in this area.”

Sharon also singled out the Old City’s Muslim Quarter and Wadi Joz for settlement.

The United States has refused Israel a $10-billion loan guarantee because it refused to halt Jewish settlement in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. Washington considers the settlements an obstacle to peace.

Palestinians say Sharon wants to shatter their neighborhoods and drive them out of the city, which is holy to three major religions. Already 140,000 Jews encircle 150,000 Arabs in East Jerusalem, virtually blocking them from new construction.

Sharon does not have the necessary final approval from the Interior Ministry, but he intends to submit the plans to a special government committee set up to cut through bureaucracy and speed up building for immigrants.

Sharon said he and Kollek discussed plans for a Jewish housing project in the Arab neighborhood of Wadi Joz beneath the Mount of Olives. The city has opposed the plan and a court is arbitrating in the dispute.

Israel captured East Jerusalem along with the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War and then annexed it. It considers all of Jerusalem its capital, but Palestinians look to East Jerusalem as their cultural, economic and political center.

Sharon also told Kollek he plans to build a new Jewish neighborhood for at least 3,000 near the Pisgat Zeev settlement, on West Bank land annexed along with East Jerusalem.

The new project would create a line of Jewish neighborhoods along a major thoroughfare connecting Jerusalem to the occupied West Bank town of Ramallah.

The main way the government acquires land is through a law making it custodian of land owned by absentees. It can declare such land be used for various public purposes.