OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that Israel would retain permanent sovereignty over "historic and holy Jerusalem" as his country commemorated its 1967 occupation of the city's Arab eastern sector.
His comments came as he prepared to head for talks in Washington amid U.S. and U.N. criticism of his government's plans to expand Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem.
"Israeli sovereignty over historic and holy Jerusalem will last for eternity. Jerusalem constitutes the heart of the Jewish people," Olmert said in a Jerusalem Day speech.
"Forty-one years ago, during a war that was imposed on us, Jerusalem was liberated and unified," the Israeli premier said.
"After thousands of years, Jerusalem resumed its position as the center for the Jewish people. It's a return that is not going to be thrown into question."
Israel captured east Jerusalem on June 7, 1967. Monday was the anniversary according to the Jewish calendar.
In 1980, Israel adopted a basic law making the city its "eternal, undivided capital" but the move has never been recognized by the international community, which regards all settlements on occupied Palestinian land as illegal. |
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Olmert reassures Abbas Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas protested Jewish settlement growth near Jerusalem in talks on Monday with Olmert, who sought to show it was business-as-usual despite a corruption probe.
"Differences were deep and strong in this area," Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said of the settlement issue, which has dogged U.S.-sponsored peace talks since they were launched in November.
Abbas's prime minister, Salam Fayyad, stepped up the pressure, calling on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in a letter to deny Israel membership over building on occupied land, a Palestinian official said.
Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, said Fayyad's lobbying efforts with the OECD were "simply unproductive" and that the prime minister raised the issue during his two-hour meeting with Abbas in Jerusalem. Olmert will fly later on Monday to Washington, where he will meet President George W. Bush.
"This process will continue," Regev said of the talks with the Palestinians, adding that Olmert recommitted himself during the meeting to trying to reach a deal on Palestinian statehood by the end of the year.
"We're hopeful, still, that it will be possible to reach such an agreement," Regev said. "I can say unequivocally that there was progress reached in this meeting today."
Plans announced by Olmert's government to build 884 new homes in two Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem to mark the anniversary drew new criticism from both the United Nations and key ally the United States.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said Israel's planned expansion of the two settlements was both "contrary to international law and to its commitments" under the peace process with the Palestinians resumed at a U.S.-hosted conference last November.
But Olmert insisted that he saw "no contradiction between the complete dedication of the Jewish people to Jerusalem and our aspirations for peace" with the Palestinians.
The Palestinians insist that any peace deal must be based on the 1967 borders and demand east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state. |
