Israel to build in Jerusalem, mulls more steps against UN bodies

TEL AVIV, Israel – Israel is pushing ahead building plans in areas the U.N. Security Council recently declared as occupied Palestinian territory and weighing new steps against U.N. agencies, as the censure roils its halls of power.

The Jerusalem municipal planning committee will review requests Wednesday to build hundreds of apartments in East Jerusalem, according to its agenda. That would contradict the terms of Resolution 2334, which demands that Israeli halt all building in areas it won in the 1967 Middle East war and brands construction there illegal.

Israel already has taken a number of steps since the resolution passed Dec. 23, including limiting work ties with countries that voted for the resolution, rebuking member states’ representatives, recalling Israeli ambassadors from co-sponsors New Zealand and Senegal, and pledging to cut off nearly $8 million in funding to U.N. institutions.

A senior Israeli official said additional measures may be in the offing against U.N. agencies it considers particularly hostile, including the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which serves Palestinian refugees; the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; and the U.N. observer force on the Golan Heights. Steps being considered include restricting new recruits to the agencies, delaying visas for their officials, and halting or delaying visits of experts to those agencies, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue is sensitive.

Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for UNRWA, said such steps against the agency would be unprecedented. “We have not heard anything directly, we’ve just seen media reports” about potential steps, he said.

Israel has reacted with fury since the Obama administration let the resolution pass by breaking with U.S. practice and not exercising its power to veto a measure the Israeli government perceives as damaging. At a time when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been boasting of Israel’s improved international standing, the council’s decision threatens to further isolate his country over its half-century of control over Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Israel says the U.N. vote will convince Palestinians they can get what they want without having to negotiate, making them more intransigent. Netanyahu has already warned his Cabinet that the vote won’t be Washington’s last foray into the region in the waning days of President Barack Obama’s administration.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry plans to lay out his vision for Israeli-Palestinian peace in coming weeks, and France is gathering dozens of foreign ministers in Paris on Jan. 15 to discuss the conflict. Another senior Israeli official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the government fears the ministers will draft parameters for ending the conflict that Israel considers unfavorable, then seek to impose them through the Security Council before Obama leaves office five days later.

Shmuel Sandler, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said Netanyahu is under pressure to respond to the U.N. vote with a wave of new construction. Education Minister Naftali Bennett, whose Jewish Home party opposes a Palestinian state, has called for Israel to annex large swathes of the West Bank, though Netanyahu has ordered Cabinet members to cease all talk of annexation for now.

“He’s under pressure from Bennett to build, but if he’s going to build it has to be limited,” Sandler said. “No matter what, he has to wait for the Trump administration before doing anything substantial in the settlements. He’s aware that Kerry’s speech is coming up, the Paris conference is coming up and Obama still has ways to hurt him.”

After the vote, Netanyahu lashed out at Obama, with whom he has had a testy relationship, saying the U.S. pushed the resolution behind the scenes and broke a commitment to shield Israel from imposed U.N. conditions. The U.S. decision to abstain in the vote, rather than veto the resolution, allowed it to pass.

Obama was highly critical of Israel’s settlements from the moment he entered office, in keeping with U.S. opposition to the construction on lands the Palestinians claim for a future state. The two leaders then clashed publicly over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, with Netanyahu denouncing it in a speech to Congress that wasn’t coordinated with the White House and that soured relations further.

The Obama administration denied Friday’s vote breached any U.S. commitments to Israel, saying it’s in keeping with U.S. support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.