'Israel has indisputable right to build in East Jerusalem'

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Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Tuesday that Israel had an "indisputable" right to build anywhere in Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem, following international calls on Israel to halt construction in the disputed area.

The calls come in response to Israel's plan to build some 20 apartments for Jews in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. has demanded that the project be halted, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet meeting on Sunday that "Israel will not agree to edicts of this kind in East Jerusalem."

The Russian Foreign Ministry joined the calls on Israel to scrap the plan, and in response, Ayalon said that "Israel has and will continue to act in accordance with its national interests, especially when it comes to Jerusalem."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1101835.html

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1. Russia, France up pressure to halt e. J'lem construction

One day after the United States demanded that Israel stop building projects in east Jerusalem, Russia joined the call, urging the Jewish state to immediately halt construction in the area, and saying that a failure to do so would be a violation of the road map peace agreement.

"The settlement should be stopped immediately in line with the road map," AFP quoted Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko as saying, in reference to a plan to build 20 housing units in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in east Jerusalem, near Mount Scopus and the National Police headquarters.

France also summoned the Israeli ambassador in Paris to demand a halt to the building in east Jerusalem, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was quoted by the news agency as saying on Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor expressed, for the first time, a formal government endorsement of the "road map" formula for Palestinian statehood. In addition, he noted that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had committed Israel to honoring all previous international agreements, and stressed that the road map was one of those agreements binding on the government.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443870665&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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2. Israeli settlements "political suicide": Merkel ally

BERLIN (Reuters) - A senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party on Tuesday urged Israel not to build more settlements, warning it risked political suicide if it continued to do so.

In unusually strong comments for a German politician, Ruprecht Polenz, the head of parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, was quoted as saying Israel's aim of having secure borders would only be possible with a two-state solution.

If Israel did not stop building settlements it ran the risk "of gradually committing suicide as a democratic state," Polenz told the Rheinische Post daily.

Enjoying safe borders would only be conceivable for Israel if East Jerusalem could operate as the capital of a Palestinian state, said Polenz. But he added Israel was trying to cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank by building more settlements.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE56K3VE20090721

[The Second Stone]

3. Indisputable

I don't think that that word means what he thinks it means.

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4. Since the matter is presently much in dispute, it would seem not. nt

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5. Europe raises pressure on Israel to stop settlements

JERUSALEM, July 21 (Reuters) - Germany, France and EU president Sweden on Tuesday joined Western nations pressing Israel to stop building settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank under a U.S.-led effort to resume stalled peace talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has resisted international calls to freeze building in occupied territory, seemed to show a sign of flexibility as a newspaper reported a secret plan to remove two dozen unauthorised settler outposts.

Israel has long pledged to dismantle hilltop outposts that it never approved, but has continued building larger settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, land it captured in a 1967 war, and where Palestinians want to build a future state.

Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he would not resume peace talks with Israel, stalled since Israel elected Netanyahu, a right-wing settler champion in February, unless all settlement construction stopped.

http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSLL696621