Israel’s plan to build in east Jerusalem ‘obstacle to peace’

ISRAEL said yesterday it plans to build nearly 700 new apartments in east Jerusalem, drawing tough criticism from both the Palestinians and the United States, which denounced it as an obstacle to peacemaking.

The dispute over east Jerusalem is the most intractable – and explosive – in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state and consider Jewish neighbourhoods there to be settlements. Israel claims all of the city as its eternal capital.