Israel gives initial approval for 200 new settler units in East Jerusalem

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH — Israeli authorities gave initial approval on Wednesday for the construction of 200 new housing units in an urban settlement in Jerusalem, a move that could aggravate tensions with Palestinians that Washington is trying to lower, Reuters reported.

Violence has flared in the past few weeks over Jerusalem's most sacred and politically sensitive site, holy to both Jews and Muslims. US Secretary of State John Kerry was due in Jordan on Wednesday for talks with His Majesty King Abdullah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on efforts to calm the situation

The new housing units are slated for Ramot, a sprawling hillside complex of apartment buildings and private homes at the northern edge of Jerusalem, on land Israel occupied in a 1967 war and annexed to the city in a move never recognised internationally. Palestinians want this territory as part of a future state.

Brachie Sprung, a spokeswoman for the Jerusalem municipality, said its planning committee granted preliminary approval for a private contractor to build the 200 housing units on land he purchased in Ramot. The project must pass several more stages before construction could begin, she said.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior aide to Abbas, said in response to the announcement: "It looks like during every visit by Kerry to the region, [Israel] threatens to build new settler homes. This is a continuous escalation and contributes to a negative atmosphere."

Last month, an Israeli decision to accelerate planning for some 1,000 new settler housing units in mainly Arab East Jerusalem drew Palestinian anger and international condemnation.

That project, along with Palestinian concerns about visits by far-right Jewish legislators to the Jerusalem religious site — revered by Muslims as Nobel Sanctuary and Jews as Temple Mount — prompted an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.

Palestinians fear settlements will block the creation of an independent state they seek in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and most countries view them as illegal.

Mosque torched

Israeli settlers torched a mosque near the West Bank town of Ramallah overnight, Palestinian security officials said on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse.

“The settlers set fire to the whole of the first floor of the mosque” in the village of Al Mughayir, near the Shilo settlement, a security official said.

Another mosque in the same village was set ablaze in a similar attack in 2012.

Hardline Jewish settlers frequently accompany their revenge attacks with graffiti bearing the legend “price tag” but that was not the case in the latest arson attack, the officials said.

A settler and an Israeli soldier were killed in separate Palestinian knife attacks in the West Bank and Tel Aviv on Monday.

On Tuesday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian protester during clashes in the southern West Bank.

Since the current round of violence began exactly five months ago with the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three Israeli settlers by fighters, at least 17 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, according to an AFP count.