Jerusalem: The Obama administration`s pressure on Israel to curb settlement activity will bolster Palestinian hardliners and hinder peace efforts, a senior Israeli cabinet minister said on Monday.
Tension with Washington flared three weeks ago, and has simmered since, over the announcement of an Israeli blueprint for 1,600 more homes for Jews in areas of the occupied West Bank that Israel had annexed to East Jerusalem.
The Palestinians, who want their own state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a capital in East Jerusalem, backed out of planned US-mediated peace talks with Israel, demanding the new project be scrapped.
Benny Begin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu`s inner cabinet, described Washington`s view on Jerusalem as departing from that of previous US administrations, that the city`s status should be resolved in peace negotiations.
"It`s bothersome, and certainly worrying," Begin told Israel Radio. "This change will definitely bring about the opposite to the declared objective. It will bring about a hardening in the policy of the Arabs and of the Palestinian Authority."
The diplomatic deadlock has coincided with an increase in Israeli-Palestinian violence in the West Bank, and in the Gaza Strip whose Islamist Hamas rulers spurn the Jewish state and deride Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas` peace strategy.
Bureau Report
