Netanyahu Tries to Calm Arab Anger Over Housing Plan

With Palestinian leaders warning of renewed violence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued assurances to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat on Friday that he will do everything possible to block construction of a newly approved Jewish housing project in the heart of traditionally Arab East Jerusalem.

The government hastened to calm rising Arab anger in the wake of the Jerusalem municipality’s decision Thursday to give the go-ahead for the controversial development of about 65 apartments in the Ras al Amud neighborhood without notifying Netanyahu beforehand.

Netanyahu dispatched an advisor, attorney Yitzhak Molcho, to telephone Arafat with word that Netanyahu will try to stop the construction project. He also asked Atty. Gen. Elyakim Rubinstein to issue an opinion by Sunday on the legality of the construction permit.

“Netanyahu can stop it, and he said he would. He can invoke public security or national security [laws],” said David Bar-Illan, the prime minister’s spokesman. “It will not go ahead at this time.”

Nonetheless, Palestinian leaders called the project’s approval, in the midst of stalemated peace negotiations, a provocation and said it could ignite riots like those that erupted in September after Israel opened a new tunnel door in Jerusalem’s disputed Old City.

“This is a conscious declaration of war against the Palestinians,” Ahmed Tibi, an advisor to Arafat, said on Israel’s Army Radio. “It is total defiance of the spirit of the signed [peace] agreement. What more can be expected of the Palestinians?”

Palestinian Higher Education Minister Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi added, “It proves that the Israeli government works deliberately to destroy the peace process.”

Peace talks came to a halt in March after Netanyahu gave the order to begin construction on a 6,500-unit Jewish housing complex on the southeastern outskirts of Jerusalem, at a site called Har Homa in Hebrew and Jabal Abu Ghneim in Arabic. The Palestinians have demanded a halt to that settlement before resuming talks, but the Israeli government has refused, saying it has a right to build anywhere in “united” Jerusalem.

Bar-Illan drew a distinction between Har Homa and Ras al Amud.

“Har Homa is a barren place as near to Jewish neighborhoods as to Arab ones, and it cries for building. But this [Ras al Amud] is in the middle of an Arab neighborhood, and the pattern in Jerusalem is to leave neighborhoods alone as a mosaic rather than a melting pot. We are not intent on irritating anyone by building in the middle of an Arab neighborhood,” he said.

But Palestinians do not make such a distinction. They see Har Homa as a link between East Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Bethlehem, and they accuse Israel of trying to cut them off from the Holy City.

The Palestinians want to build an independent state in the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured the territory from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast War.

The Jerusalem municipality granted the permit to build in Ras al Amud to Irving Moskowitz, a Miami millionaire who funds Jewish settlement in occupied areas. Moskowitz’s 4-year-old request to build 130 units had been held up by the Interior Ministry, but Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert said the scaled-back version is in sync with existing city plans and does not require the approval of the Interior Ministry. He said the city has no legal basis for denying the permit.

Olmert confirmed that Moskowitz had threatened to sue the city if his plans were not approved. “I don’t think it can be stopped,” Olmert said at a news conference.

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In response to queries, he added, “Certainly it is a good project for Jerusalem.” He said he believes that Palestinians would be “very happy” to have the investment in their neighborhood.

Moskowitz is a friend and political ally of Olmert--Israeli television showed footage of the two at the Hasmonean tunnel in the Old City just after the new door was opened last fall and before the riots erupted. Moskowitz has contributed to the renovation of the tunnel near the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site.

National Religious Party Chairman Hanan Porat congratulated Olmert for making a “straight and courageous” decision in issuing the permit. But Israeli opposition leaders criticized the project as an attempt to create “another Hebron,” referring to the West Bank city with a Jewish enclave in the center of an Arab community.

Labor Party leader Ehud Barak lauded Netanyahu’s “late” decision to postpone the construction.

It was the second time in three days that Netanyahu has had to back away from policies set into motion by his own right-wing allies. On Wednesday, the Israeli parliament gave preliminary approval to a law that would require a two-thirds majority of the Knesset to trade parts of the occupied Golan Heights for peace with Syria.

Netanyahu opposed the proposed law, then voted for it but said he would have it altered in committee to require a simple majority of parliamentary votes with a public referendum on any deal making territorial concessions on the Golan.

Syrian President Hafez Assad, who wants the return of the captured territory in exchange for a peace treaty, reportedly is furious about the Israeli vote and called to discuss it with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Arafat said he will go to Cairo today to discuss the Ras al Amud decision with Mubarak.