Israelis Shun Critics, OK Jerusalem Expansion

The Israeli Cabinet, ignoring criticism from Washington and the Palestinians, unanimously approved a plan Sunday to expand the boundaries of Jerusalem, increase its Jewish majority and strengthen ties with nearby Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians immediately condemned the decision, calling it a violation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords and an attempt to influence future negotiations on the city’s status.

“This burns the bridges to the permanent status negotiations,” said Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator with Israel. “It’s a very, very grave decision.”

The United States also has warned that the plan could doom sensitive U.S. efforts to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians and could deal another blow, perhaps the final one, to the 5-year-old peace process. The Clinton administration has asked both sides to refrain from unilateral actions as it tries to end a 15-month stalemate in negotiations and persuade Israel to cede more West Bank land to the Palestinians.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied that the Cabinet decision changed the status of Jerusalem or violated existing peace agreements. He accused the Palestinians of creating an “artificial storm” of controversy over the plan, which he said was based primarily on economic considerations.

“This is an important decision aimed at strengthening Jerusalem,” he said in a news conference at his Jerusalem office. “We are not changing the status of any one of these communities or Jerusalem. . . . There is no violation of the Oslo accords.”

Netanyahu charged that the Palestinians are violating the peace accords reached in the Norwegian capital in 1993 by trying to establish their own authority in Jerusalem and to upgrade their current observer status at the United Nations.

The prime minister also accused critics of “this conditioned reflex to accuse Israel” and asked, “How could anyone interpret any of these decisions as political decisions?”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Sunday that she had criticized the Jerusalem plan during a phone conversation with Netanyahu soon after he unveiled the proposal last week.

“I told him that it was being viewed as something that was not helpful” to U.S. efforts to get the two sides to end the impasse in negotiations, Albright said on the NBC-TV program “Meet the Press.”

Under the plan, Jerusalem will annex several communities to the west of the city, inside Israel proper, in order to expand the city’s tax base and increase its Jewish majority, which now stands at 70% out of a population of 620,000. These towns include Upper Motza, Beit Zait and Mevo Beitar but not Mevaseret Zion, a relatively affluent community that has fought the proposed annexation.

The decision also sets up an umbrella municipality that will give the city administrative powers over nearby Jewish settlements in the West Bank but does not annex them. The territory has been occupied by Israel since it was captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War.

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Netanyahu said that over the next two months, a committee headed by the director general of his office will determine the specific powers of the new umbrella authority and that Israel’s Interior Ministry will decide which settlements will be included, although they are likely to include the booming bedroom community of Maale Adumim to the east and the town of Givat Zeev to the north. These and other settlements that surround Jerusalem are widely expected to be annexed by Israel in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Abu Dis, a community just east of Jerusalem that has often been mentioned as the possible site of a future Palestinian capital, is unlikely to be part of the umbrella authority.

In a departure from existing government policy, a Netanyahu spokesman said, the new authority will have the final say on planning and building in the settlements in question. Under current policy, the Israeli Defense Ministry must grant final approval before construction can begin in settlements.

More than 150,000 Israelis live in about 140 settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights. The United States views the communities as an obstacle to the peace process, which is based on the formula of trading occupied land for peace.

“It’s an efficiency measure,” David Bar-Illan, a senior aide to Netanyahu, said in explaining the change. “It will make it possible to build faster in these areas but will not change their status politically.”

Palestinians, however, are unlikely to view more rapid expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as anything but political, aimed at influencing the permanent status negotiations that were supposed to have been concluded by May 1999 under terms of the interim peace accords but that, in reality, have barely begun.

Those negotiations are to address the most volatile issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians, including the status of Jerusalem, refugees, Jewish settlements and final borders. Pending those talks, both sides promised not to change the status quo in Jerusalem, but each has often accused the other of violating the letter and spirit of their interim accords.

At the end of the interim period, the Palestinians hope to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But Israel says that Jerusalem, including the traditionally Arab eastern sector, is its own eternal capital and will never be redivided.

“Netanyahu is trying to dictate the terms of the permanent status agreements,” Palestinian negotiator Erekat said. “His government is working to upset the demographic composition of Jerusalem, annexing land and trying to bring more Jewish residents in at a time when they’re demolishing Palestinian homes and confiscating Palestinian identity cards.

“This is a racist plan and should send a clear message to the United States that this man is not about peace.”

Netanyahu said the plan had “no political significance” and that he had made an effort to convince Albright in their telephone conversation that Israel had tried to be careful in the measure not to touch on the most sensitive issues between the two sides.

“There’s nothing controversial here,” the prime minister said, adding that he and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert had both been surprised by the criticism.

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The expansion plan includes economic incentives to help attract--and keep--educated and skilled Jewish residents in Jerusalem, which is the poorest big city in Israel. The plan calls for investments in mass transit, roads, housing and high technology.

The plan has also proved controversial among many Israelis. Hundreds demonstrated against it Sunday, blocking traffic on the main highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and protesting that annexation of the suburbs west of the city would lead to higher taxes.