Building Homes in East Jerusalem Would Violate Pledge, Says Baker

Israel will be violating assurances it gave the United States if it carries out plans to build 15,000 new apartments in East Jerusalem for Soviet Jews, Secretary of State James Baker said Tuesday.

“We think that the United States is and should be entitled to rely upon assurances received from the foreign minister of Israel,” Baker said at a State Department news conference. “We are relying on those assurances.”

The secretary of state was reacting to Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Sharon’s announcement Monday that the Ministerial Absorption Committee had decided to build 17,000 new apartments in Jerusalem, all but 2,000 of them in the eastern part of the capital, which Israel annexed in 1967.

The apartment project, which still needs Cabinet approval, is viewed in both Washington and Jerusalem as an angry response to the U.S. vote for the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for last week’s violence on the Temple Mount.

Baker, continuing the practice at the State Department for the last few weeks, refused to state directly that Israel had promised it would not settle Soviet Jews in East Jerusalem.

Instead, he pointed to an Oct. 2 letter he received from Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, providing assurances Baker had sought before approving U.S. guarantees for $400 million in loans Israel will use to house Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union.

“The letter is quite clear, I think, in speaking about areas outside the Green Line,” Baker said, referring to the boundary that divided Israel and Jordanian-held territory before the 1967 Six-Day War.

‘LETTER SPEAKS FOR ITSELF’

Baker quoted the letter as saying that “the government of Israel’s policy is not to direct or settle Soviet Jews beyond the Green Line.”

The letter, which Levy signed at the conclusion of a weeklong visit to New York, further states that the “use of the housing loan guarantees will be restricted to the geographic areas which were subject to the government of Israel’s administration prior to June 5, 1967,” Baker said.

He then explained that “the Green Line ran through East Jerusalem, and we know that East Jerusalem was not subject to the administration of (the) government of Israel prior to June 5, 1967.”

Israel, however, does not consider East Jerusalem to be part of the disputed territories it administers, but an integral part of its united capital.

When Baker was asked about this, he replied, “I am not going to interpret it (the assurances) for the government of Israel. I think the letter speaks for itself.”

East Jerusalem has been a sore point between Israel and the Bush administration. Earlier this year, President Bush included East Jerusalem as part of the disputed areas in which the administration is opposed to Jewish settlements.

But after a storm of protest from Israeli officials and American Jewish leaders, the White House issued a statement saying the United States upholds the right of Jews to live anywhere in Jerusalem.