Sources in the Prime Minister’s Bureau have rejected statements made by the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov that construction in Jewish settlements on lands the Palestinians want for a future state is illegal and that their expansion is one of the great obstacles to peace. Mladenov reported to the Security Council that in recent months there was a substantial increase in Israel’s announcements of construction beyond the Green Line, which is the pre-1967 border with Jordan, and in demolition of Palestinian houses.
Sources in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bureau said that the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria, the biblical term for the West Bank, was not the obstacle to peace. Rather, the obstacle was the constant attempt to deny the connection of Jews to the historic regions of their land, and the persistent refusal to recognize the fact that Jews are not foreign to these regions. The sources stressed that the claim that Jewish construction in Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Israel, is illegal – is by definition absurd, just like the claim that American construction in Washington or French construction in Paris is illegal.
They added that Palestinian demand for an ethnic cleansing of Jews in the future Palestinian state is appalling, and the United Nations should condemn this demand instead of adopting it.