U.S. Muddles Settlement Issue in West Bank

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

UNITED NATIONS – The State Department played it down the middle yesterday on the Arab-Israeli dispute over West Bank settlements, adding confusion to Washington’s policy on Israel’s housing construction in areas behind the pre-1967 border.


“Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop,” the deputy State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said yesterday, quoting a June, 2002 speech by President Bush.


American officials, however, are in “technical talks” on the issue with Israel, he said, adding fuel to press speculations that the Bush administration is trying to avoid denouncing Israel’s recent announcement that it intends to build new housings in the disputed areas.


Yesterday, the Israeli government issued tenders to 530 new units in Har Gilo, a Jerusalem suburb in an area Israel won from Jordan in the Six Days War of 1967. Last week a similar tender, for 1,000 units, was issued for another such Jerusalem suburb, Maale Edomim.


Israeli officials point to an April exchange of letters between Washington and Jerusalem. Mr. Bush wrote to Prime Minister Sharon that it would be “unrealistic” to expect Israel to evacuate all settlements in the West Bank.


According to Jerusalem officials, there is an understanding that housing can be expanded, as long as the municipal borders of settlements are not. “As far as we are concerned, anything inside the settlements is kosher,” a senior Israeli government official told The New York Sun yesterday, asking he would not be named.


Mr. Ereli declined yesterday to condemn the new Israeli construction tenders. “I’m not going to speak to these specific cases,” he said. “What we are discussing with the Israelis is how we can practically follow through…to make progress towards a settlement freeze.”


He referred to “technical talks” between American and Israeli experts that began recently by National Security Council point man Elliott Abrams, and are expected to continue next week, to reach an understanding on where in the settlements Israel would be allowed to build. Meanwhile the debate inside Israel widened on how to respond to international pressure on the defense barrier being erected to separate Israelis from Palestinian Arabs.


A former legal adviser to the foreign office, Alan Baker, yesterday contended that Attorney General Menahchem Mazuz exceeded his jurisdiction when he wrote last week that the advisory opinion issued last week by the Hague-based International Court of Justice “creates a different legal reality for Israel in the international sphere.”


According to Mr. Baker, the attorney general overemphasized the ICJ’s legal importance, calling for a political and diplomatic, rather than legal, activity.


“This is why there is a Foreign Ministry,” Mr. Baker told the Jerusalem Post. Israel said it has taken “notice” of the ICJ’s opinion, which is expected to be used by the Arab Group at the United Nations next month, as world leaders arrive in New York for the annual debate of the General Assembly.


The Sharon government announced it would obey an order by Israel’s Supreme Court, which in July told the military to change the route of the barrier to accommodate Palestinian plaintiffs.


The New York Sun

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