Israel to build more homes in East Jerusalem

PanARMENIAN.Net - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told senior ministers he is lifting restrictions on settlement building in East Jerusalem, a statement said on Sunday, January 22, immediately after the city's municipal government approved permits for the building of hundreds of new homes in the area, Reuters reports.

"There is no longer a need to coordinate construction in the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. We can build where we want and as much as we want," the statement quoted Netanyahu as saying, adding that he also intended to allow the start of building in the West Bank.

"My vision is to enact sovereignty over all the settlements," the statement also said, pointing to Netanyahu's apparent bid to win greater support from settlers and appeal to a right-wing coalition partner.

Netanyahu told the ministers of the move at a meeting where they also decided unanimously to postpone discussing a bill proposing the Israeli annexation of the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim, home to 40,000 Israelis near Jerusalem.

A brief statement issued after the discussion by the ministerial forum known as the Security Cabinet, said work on the bill would be delayed until after Netanyahu meets the new U.S. President, Donald Trump.

Netanyahu held his first phone conversation with the president on Sunday, saying afterwards that the conversation had been "very warm" and that he had been invited to a meeting with Trump in Washington in February.

The housing projects approved by the Jerusalem municipality on Sunday are on land that the Palestinians seek as part of a future state and had been taken off the agenda in December at Netanyahu's request to avoid further censure from Trump's predecessor Barack Obama.

However, Israel's right wing believes that Trump's attitude towards settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem -- areas Israel captured in the 1967 war -- will be far more supportive than that of Obama.

Jerusalem's City Hall approved the building permits for more than 560 units in the urban settlements of Pisgat Zeev, Ramat Shlomo and Ramot, areas annexed to Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally.