The Israeli Knesset (parliament) building and Knesset Menorah.
“I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till He establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.” (Isaiah 62:6–7)
Several international bodies recently lashed out at Israel after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued approval for building in Jerusalem.
“For some there is never a convenient time to build homes in Jerusalem, and if it had depended on them, we would never have built one home during the last 60 years because it was never the appropriate time,” he said at the opening of the winter session of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) on Monday.
“There is wide agreement among the public that Israel has the full right to build the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Every Israeli government in the last 50 years did that, and it is also clear to the Palestinians that those places will stay under Israeli control in any mutual agreement,” he said. “The French build in Paris, the English build in London, the Israelis build in Jerusalem. Should we tell Jews not to live in Jerusalem because it will stir things up?”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the opening of the Knesset’s Winter Session. To his right is Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. (Photo: Kobi Gideon / GPO)
US State Department Spokesperson, Jen Psaki, stated that the new building is “incompatible with the pursuit of peace.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected the claim that adding housing for the residents of Jerusalem is poisonous to peace.
“We have built in Jerusalem, we are building in Jerusalem and we will continue to build in Jerusalem. I have heard a claim that our construction in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem makes peace more distant. It is the criticism which is making peace more distant,” Netanyahu said on Tuesday at a cornerstone laying ceremony in Ashdod.
“These words are detached from reality. They foster false statements among the Palestinians. When Abu Mazen incites to murder Jews in Jerusalem, the international community is silent and when we build in Jerusalem they are up in arms. I do not accept this double standard,” he emphasized. (Examiner)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the cornerstone-laying ceremony for Ashdod’s new southern port. (Photo: Kobi Gideon / GPO)
With a Jewish population of 500,000 living in Jerusalem, the majority—300,000—live in the city’s expanding neighborhoods of Gilo, Ramot, Pisgat Ze’ev and Har Homa located in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
Last month’s approved building projects of 400 units in southern Jerusalem’s Har Homa and 660 in northern Ramat Shlomo will only slightly grow the housing supply in Israel’s capital city, giving Jerusalem residents a few more options for finding affordable housing.
Netanyahu said it is imperative that the Palestinian Authority (PA) comes to the negotiating table instead of making unilateral moves in international circles.
A street in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem.
“What the Palestinians are asking of us is the establishment of a Palestinian state, without peace and without security,” Netanyahu told the parliament members.
“They are demanding a withdrawal to the ‘67 lines, entry of refugees, and the dividing of Jerusalem. And after all those exaggerated demands, they are not willing to agree to the basic condition for peace between two peoples: mutual recognition,” he said.
The Green Line refers to the demarcation lines set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between the armies of Israel and those of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
While Netanyahu refuses to relinquish Israel’s “basic demands for life, peace and—foremost—security,” the PA has continued to move along efforts to secure statehood by September 2015, based on the armistice lines of the 1967 war—the Green Line. (Al-Monitor)
In addition, the PA is seeking UN approval to expel all Israeli residents from Israel’s heartland of Judea and Samaria (also called the West Bank) by November 2016.
Some nations, though, are not waiting for UN approval or negotiations. As of last week, Sweden became the first European country to overstep the peace process and recognize a state of Palestine outside of the negotiating table; Israel has since withdrawn its ambassador.
The Kingdom of Jordan, which occupied Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem in the 19 years between Israel’s independence in 1948 and the Six-Day War of 1967, rushed to request from the UN Security Council an emergency session on behalf of the PA in response to Netanyahu’s Jerusalem construction notice.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, called Israel’s approval of the 1,060 homes “a slap in the face.”
PA demands for a state have named east Jerusalem as its future “eternal capital,” while Netanyahu and his supporters have held fast to the position that Jerusalem will never be divided.
“I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will put them on trial for what they did to My inheritance, My people Israel, because they scattered My people among the nations and divided up My land.” (Joel 3:2)
