Renewed Israel-PA talks uncertain after Biden blow-up

Israel scrambles to recover from poorly timed housing starts

By ICEJ News

10 Mar 2010

Israeli leaders have spent the past day in damage control after a poorly timed announcement about the approval of 1,600 new Jewish housing starts in an east Jerusalem neighborhood miffed visiting US Vice President Joe Biden and prompted the Arab League to threaten to rescind their backing of renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Israel's Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday that the Jerusalem municipality had approved 1,600 new housing units to ease the ultra-Orthodox community's housing shortage for young couples in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, a community of 20,000 in northern Jerusalem. The announcement involved apartments that had been in the approval process for three years, but it caught Biden by surprise and left Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uncomfortable when the two sat down for dinner last night.

After brushing off Arab complaints about 112 new housing starts in a West Bank community earlier yesterday amid lots of smiles and handshakes with Israeli officials, Biden’s solidarity mission to Israel quickly changed tone last evening when he released a statement in which he “strongly condemned” the Jerusalem building plans. "The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now," Biden asserted.

Over dinner last night, Netanyahu explained to Biden that he had no foreknowledge of the announced approvals and would have postponed them had he known. Still, he has no plans to curtail Jewish building anywhere in Jerusalem, unlike the 10-month moratorium on new housing starts in the West Bank.

Interior Ministry Eli Yishai, who had secured the housing for his own haredi constituency, spent Wednesday profusely apologizing for the badly timed decision and also pleading ignorance. He assured it was not intended to scuttle the upcoming “proximity talks” with the Palestinian Authority nor to embarrass Biden.

Yesterday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak noted that the construction project does not represent a new development, and was needed for ultra-Orthodox families “who are struggling and cannot buy elsewhere. But today he expressed his anger over the “unwarranted” announcement by the Interior Ministry, which was “damaging” efforts to launch indirect negotiations with the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, PA officials have spent the day hurling accusations that the housing announcement shows Israel is not serious about peace. PA lead negotiator Saeb Erekat blasted the Israeli government for “making it almost impossible for us, the Americans and the international community, to take a one centimeter step in the direction of reviving the peace process."

The Israeli news site Walla also reported today that a number of Arab League foreign ministers have already informed US special Mideast envoy George Mitchell that their decision last week to back Abbas in entering the indirect talks with Israel "is no longer valid."

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