Palestinians: Israel Destroying Peace Process

By Israel building homes in East Jerusalem, Palestinians believe it is ruining the peace process.

A spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said the move “destroys the peace process and is a message to the international community that Israel is a country that does not respect international law”.

Plans to build the homes in the city’s Arab sector emerged in Israeli media almost immediately after Israel began freeing 21 prisoners to the West Bank and another five to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip overnight.

Later, a senior Israeli official confirmed to AFP that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Gideon Saar had “agreed on four building plans in Jerusalem”.

The sequence was almost a mirror image of August 13, when a first tranche of 26 prisoners was freed and Israel announced construction of more than 2,000 new settler homes, mostly in east Jerusalem.

The Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, called on Abbas’s western-backed Palestinian Authority to break off the talks, saying they encouraged Israeli settlement.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.