Arab furor over Israel’s plans to confiscate Arab-owned lands in eastern Jerusalem has clouded the Jewish state’s already troubled negotiations with the Palestinians.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres this week attempted to defuse the uproar during a two-day trip to Cairo, where he met with Egyptian and Palestinian officials to discuss the planned land confiscations.
On Monday, Peres proposed that a “fact-finding” mission be formed to determine the ownership of the roughly 140 acres of land that Israel is planning to confiscate in eastern Jerusalem.
According to the proposal, Police Minister Moshe Shahal and Palestinian official Faisal Husseini would meet later this week to discuss who owns the land.
Peres said Sunday that about 60 percent of the land is owned by Jews and that 400 of the new apartments planned to be built on the confiscated land would be for Palestinians.
This sparked a sharp reply from Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who called Peres’ remarks a “brilliant lie.”
Erekat later apologized for his remarks, saying he made them in a private conversation with three Israeli journalists after they told him of Peres’ figures regarding who owned the land.
“I immediately responded to those figures as a `brilliant lie,’ but it was not meant as disrespect for Mr. Peres,” he said.
Peres reportedly announced Monday a series of measures intended to make life easier for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
The measures included an increase in the number of Palestinians allowed to work in Israel, simplified procedures for products and goods entering Palestinian self-rule areas, approval for a heliport in Gaza, the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and an end to the curfew in the West Bank town of Hebron.
Peres encountered Arab anger over the Israeli move firsthand when he arrived on Sunday in Cairo.
His arrival came a day after foreign ministers from the 22-member League of Arab State met in Cairo, where they called on the U.N. Security Council to block the Israeli move.
But Israel rejected the call for a Security Council meeting, saying the land had to be confiscated from Jews as well as Arabs, in order to provide room for the city’s growing population.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Amre Moussa, who met Peres at the airport and later held talks with him, said he hoped that the Israeli government would reconsider the planned confiscation.
Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath said the planned land confiscation put the entire peace process, not just the Israeli-Palestinian track, in jeopardy.
And Erekat described the land moves as “terrorist acts,” which he said would only lead to more violence.
But Peres tried to play down the differences.
He defended the move, telling reporters in Cairo that it “is not a political development.”
“It is, if you want, a demographic one” reflecting the growth of Jerusalem, he said.
Peres told reporters that he thought that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would meet their July I deadline for an accord on Palestinian elections and Israeli troop withdrawals.
at Saturday’s Arab League meeting in Cairo, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat warned that Israel’s move to appropriate land in eastern Jerusalem would create new facts on the ground before the future of the city could be negotiated.
Talks between the two sides regarding the final status of Jerusalem are slated to begin in May 1996.
Last week, a number of Western countries, including the United States, Great Britain and France, criticized Israel’s announced plans to expropriate some 140 acres of land in eastern Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, denunciation of the confiscations also emanated from the Jordanian capital of Amman, where a parliamentary committee on Jerusalem convened a special meeting on the issue.
In a statement issued afterward, the committee condemned Israel and also denounced the United States for its rejection of a Security Council debate on the matter.
In a separate development, Palestinian construction plans in eastern Jerusalem have drawn the ire of Israeli officials.
Jerusalem municipal officials warned that construction at Orient House, the PLO’s headquarters in eastern Jerusalem, would be demolished if the Palestinians did not obtain a building permit for the work.
Last Friday, the municipality obtained a work stoppage order from the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court after municipal officials discovered the unlicensed construction work earlier last week.
City officials suggested that Orient House put in a formal request for a permit for the construction, which includes an addition to the building occupying at least 84 square yards.
Orient House officials maintained that they obtained no permit because the work involved renovations only.
Ziad Abu-Ziad, a member of the Palestinian Authority charged Israeli officials with using the Orient House construction as a means of diverting attention from its own planned land confiscations.
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