European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Friday parroted Palestinian Authority officials saying renewed Jersualem construction by Israel was a threat to the "two-state solution."
Ashton said she deeply regets "information of the publicly stated intention of the Israeli government to continue settlement expansion in east Jerusalem," adding that the EU has "repeatedly called on Israel to end all settlement activity."
Continued construction in the Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, Ashton said, "threatens the viability of an agreed two-state solution and undermines ongoing efforts to resume negotiations."
Arutz Sheva notes: Ashton's comments were in reference to Interior Minister Eli Yishai's appoval Thursday of 1,600 new housing units in Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, which in fact is northern Jerusalem, between Ramot with 60,000 Jewish residents and the Har Hotzvim Industrial Park. It was empty hills before the reunification of the city in 1967. Ms Ashton would do well to look at a map of the city.
Arabs and anti-Zionist media call all areas reunited with Jerusalem in 1967 "eastern Jerusalem", giving the impression that the eastern, Arab-populated section that was occupied by Jordan until then is going to have an influx of thousands of Jews that will crowd Arab out.
At the beginning of next week, the Interior Ministry is expecting to give the final approval to two additional projects in Jerusalem – 2,000 housing units in southern Jerusalem's Givat Hamatos, adjacent to Gilo and once used as an absorption center for Ethiopian Jews, and 625 units in Pisgat Ze’ev in northern Jerusalem past French Hill, Yishai’s spokesman Roei Lachmanovich said.
Israel, whose government returned to its historic capital of thousands of years since the inception of the modern Jewish state, regards Jerusalem as anything but a "settlement" and has said it will remain Israel's eternal and undivided capital.