Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times
From his home in East Jerusalem last year, Haj Ibrahim Ahmad Hawa looked at the separation barrier surrounding Jerusalem with the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim in the background. More Photos »
JERUSALEM — As the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to upgrade the Palestinians’ status Thursday night, Israel took steps toward building housing in a controversial area of East Jerusalem known as E1, where Jewish settlements have long been seen as the death knell for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said on Friday that the decision was made late Thursday night to move forward on “preliminary zoning and planning preparations” for housing units in E1, which would connect the large settlement of Maale Adumim to Jerusalem and therefore make it impossible to connect the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem to Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Israel also authorized the construction of 3,000 housing units in other parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the official said.
The prime minister’s office refused to comment on whether the settlement expansion — first reported on Twitter by a reporter for the Israeli daily Haaretz — was punishment for the Palestinians’ success in upgrading its status from nonmember observer entity to nonmember observer state at the United Nations, but it was widely seen as such. The United States, one of only eight countries that stood with Israel in voting against the Palestinians’ upgrade, has for two decades vigorously opposed construction in E1, a 3,000-acre expanse of hilly parkland where a police station was opened in 2008.
In Washington, a State Department official criticized the move. “We reiterate our longstanding opposition to settlements and East Jerusalem construction,” he said. “We believe it is counterproductive and makes it harder to resume direct negotiations and achieve a two-state outcome.”
Hagit Ofran, who runs the Settlement Watch project of Peace Now, called E1 a “deal breaker for the two-state solution” and denounced the decision as “disastrous.”
“Instead of punishing the Palestinians, they are actually punishing Israel,” Ms. Ofran, who is Israeli, said in an interview. “Instead of taking advantage of this bid in the U.N. and calling for negotiations to get to a two-state solution, this government is choosing to take actions that might prevent the possibility of a two-state solution.”
But Dani Dayan, leader of Israel’s settler movement, welcomed the news, saying it was “a very important Israeli interest to develop E1.”
He described the two-state solution as “an existential threat to Israel” and said the E1 development was “beneficial for peace because a two-state solution is a prologue for another bloody confrontation.”
“The fear to develop the communities is not rational,” Mr. Dayan said. “The opposition to the settlements has become a kind of religious dogma for the West.”
Even Mr. Dayan, however, said he did not like the idea of expanding settlements “as a sort of retaliatory or punitive step.”
“Under the circumstances that we understand the government operates, I think it’s O.K.,” Mr. Dayan added. “We have a legal and a political and a moral right to build. It’s strategic for Jerusalem; to strengthen Jerusalem is the only horizon. We don’t see it as an obstacle to peace.”
Israel Moves to Expand Settlements in East Jerusalem
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Israel Moves to Expand Settlements in East Jerusalem
