Netanyahu Shrugs Off East Jerusalem Furor

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday dismissed criticism from Palestinian Authority officials and Israeli opposition leaders over a decision to begin construction at a politically sensitive site in East Jerusalem.

Announcement of Israel’s plans to proceed with construction of housing at the site, known in Hebrew as Har Homa and Arabic as Jabal Abu Ghneim, came just hours after Netanyahu’s Cabinet gave a heavily hedged endorsement to the new land-for-security agreement with the Palestinians.

“I said for the last two years that . . . Har Homa will be built before the year 2000,” Netanyahu told a news conference. “I’ve also said that Jerusalem is our capital; this is an issue of sovereignty.”

The government decision to proceed on Har Homa was not announced when the Cabinet approval was reached Wednesday. Instead, a government advertisement in Thursday’s Haaretz newspaper called for contractors to submit bids for 1,025 homes at the site.

Groundbreaking at the isolated hill in a far southeast corner of Jerusalem plunged Israeli-Palestinian peace moves into crisis last year, and the latest attempt to proceed with construction appears likely to do so again.

Angry Palestinian officials charged that the decision to proceed with construction, which has been on hold for more than 19 months, violates the accord just ratified and makes meaningless any future discussions over the status of Jerusalem. They called on the United States to intervene.

“We urge the government not to carry out this very destructive decision,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Thursday. “Mr. Netanyahu must still ‘get it.’ He’s trying to balance between his extremist demands and peace, and these things cannot go together.”

If the construction goes forward, added Ahmed Tibi, a senior advisor to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, “it will be a disaster.”

Israel sees all of Jerusalem, including the east side captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War, as its eternal and undivided capital. Palestinians regard East Jerusalem as the capital of their own future state.

The issue of the city’s future is considered perhaps the most sensitive and most complex facing Israel and the Palestinians as they try to move forward in the long-stalled peace process.

Dennis B. Ross, the indefatigable U.S. mediator, was expected back in the region today to help with implementation of the agreement and was expected to meet Arafat tonight. Ross had been scheduled to arrive earlier but waited, reportedly until the Israeli Cabinet voted on ratification.

In Washington, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin criticized the Israeli Cabinet’s attempt to put conditions on the peace agreement, signed last month at the Wye Plantation in Maryland.

“Both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Chairman Arafat signed without conditions, and, therefore, we expect the Wye memorandum, which was accepted and contains obligations to be implemented by both sides, to be carried out according to the terms of the agreement,” he said.

The Clinton administration also criticized Netanyahu’s decision to go ahead with the Har Homa project. Rubin and White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said the action will complicate the already difficult peace process.

Netanyahu’s political opposition, meanwhile, accused the prime minister of going ahead with the construction bids as a political payoff for right-wing opponents of the accord, in hopes they won’t topple his government.

“It looks more like political compensation for the people in his government who oppose the deal than a wise, well-timed step,” Labor Party leader Ehud Barak told Israel’s Army Radio.

But Netanyahu expressed surprise that the decision to proceed with the construction after months of inaction could upset anyone.

“How this could be called a provocation is beyond me,” Netanyahu said. “Jerusalem is not a provocation. Jerusalem is our eternal value, our eternal rock. It’s something I don’t care to deal with in a political context.”

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.