Dubai: Hours before the vote in the Israeli Knesset on Sunday to link the West Bank colonies to occupied Jerusalem, the US exerted pressure on the Israeli government to delay the vote because the move would change the reality on the ground, Israeli officials and Palestinian political scientists said.
Press reports quoted Likud Member of the Knesset David Bitan, who is also a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as telling Army Radio that the vote set for Sunday was delayed because “there is American pressure claiming this is [an] annexation”. Bitan said it will take time to clarify the bill to the US.
“Decisions ... of strategic importance [like this one] can’t be taken without American approval, even if that approval comes in the form of silence,” said Hunaida Ganem, General Director of Madar Centre in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
“America knows when to interfere and when not. When the issue is more rhetorical, it won’t move. But when the issue changes the reality, America does interfere,” the Harvard educated Ganem told Gulf News.
- Nabeel Shaath | Senior Palestinian official
The bill, which was supposed to be voted on in the Knesset, amounts to de facto annexation of Israeli colonies around the occupied Jerusalem, according to its opponents, as it will incorporate major Israeli colonies currently in the occupied West Bank into occupied Jerusalem, by expanding the city limits. From the perspective of the international community, the fate of Israeli colonies in the West Bank will be decided in the final status talks of the stalled peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis.
However, according to the Israeli press and officials, it aims to bring 19 Jewish colonies under the city’s municipal jurisdiction, but not officially annex them.
“It aims to ensure a Jewish majority in the united city and to expand its borders by adding 150,000 residents to the area of a greater [occupied] Jerusalem,” Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said in a statement to reporters. “It’s an unequivocal response to all those in the international community who are questioning the Jewish people’s right to [occupied] Jerusalem.”
The fate of occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israel war, is among the most sensitive issues in the peace talks. The Palestinians insist on their right to make East Jerusalem the capital of their future state, while Israel has said that both East and West Jerusalem is its “eternal, united capital”. No country in the world has acknowledged the Israeli move in 1980 of annexing both parts of Jerusalem.
Speaking to Gulf News hours before the news of the delay broke, senior Palestinian official Nabeel Shaath called the vote “a continuation of the Zionist, colonialism crime against our country, and especially [occupied] Jerusalem”.
“This is something we can’t stay silent on. We have contacted the Americans and all parties [concerned] to live up to their responsibility,” said Shaath, who was the chief negotiator and is currently the head of the foreign relations branch of the ruling Fatah movement in the occupied West Bank.
Shaath, who recently returned from a trip to Europe, said the European Union, as well as Russia and China, support the Palestinian position.
“We are also counting on the position of our Arab brothers. This issue is very dangerous.”
Apart from defining the borders of “Greater Jerusalem”, the bill excludes nearly 100,000 Palestinians living in areas between Occupied Jerusalem and West Bank City of Ramallah, who are Jerusalemites and hold Jerusalem identity cards. They are threatened with losing their rights in their own city.
“This is a real attack on occupied Jerusalem”, said Shaath.
However, Ganem, who is a Palestinian from the 1948 areas, said the bill was part of ongoing competition among right wing politicians in Israel on try to bring in more “nationalistic” laws, especially given that Israel may have early elections, given corruption allegations against Netanyahu.
The bill passed the first stage of voting in the Knesset earlier, she said. Nevertheless, it became evident last week that a new article had been added, which speaks about the borders of “Greater Jerusalem”. It was this that caused the anger and controversy, Ganem explained.
The initial draft spoke only about the need to have two-thirds Knesset majority — 80 out of 120 members — to change the 1980 Israeli law calling the city the eternal and united capital of Israel.
The major colony of Maaleh Adumim, east of occupied Jerusalem, will be among the areas absorbed into the expanded city limits under the draft legislation, according to an explanatory note issued by its sponsors.
The colonies mentioned, however, would not be fully annexed by Israel — at least not in the beginning — although Netanyahu pledged on a recent visit to Maaleh Adumim that it would at some point in time become part of the Jewish state.
“We shall build here thousands of housing units” and add industrial zones, Netanyahu said during his visit to the colony that houses 37,000 people. “This place will be a part of the state of Israel.”
Maaleh Adumim’s municipal boundaries include a contentious area known as E1 adjacent to the colony.
E1 and Maaleh Adumim form an Israeli buffer east of occupied Jerusalem that the Palestinians say would divide the city from the West Bank, and badly hurt the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state.
Also incorporated under the new bill would be the ultra-Orthodox Jewish colony of Beitar Illit, southwest of occupied Jerusalem, the Gush Etzion colony bloc to the south and Efrat and Givat Zeev colonies.
“The [colonies] adjoining [occupied] Jerusalem will maintain certain municipal autonomy, since they will be considered sub-municipalities of [occupied] Jerusalem,” the draft bill says.
Katz said the bill would add an additional 150,000 people to occupied Jerusalem’s population, strengthening its Jewish majority.
Haaretz newspaper on Thursday said the wording meant the colonies would be annexed to occupied Jerusalem rather than to the state of Israel.
But colony watchdog Peace Now said any difference was purely cosmetic.
“The meaning of the bill is a de-facto annexation of these territories to Israel, even if it would be possible to argue that this will not constitute de-jure annexation,” it said in a statement.
-- Additonal input from AP and AFP
