Palestinians Denounce Housing Project in Eastern Yerushalayim

The Palestinian Authority has denounced Israeli plans to build thousands of housing units in eastern Yerushalayim, announced by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu‏‏ earlier on Thursday.

“Netanyahu’s insistence on building thousands of new settler units in the territories of the Palestinian state is a systematic destruction of the two-state solution,” a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud, Abbas Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said in a statement carried by the official Wafa news agency.

PM Netanyahu’s announcement drew negative comment from the main Israeli opposition party as well, which cast doubt on the prime minister’s intention to follow up on it.

Blue and White MK Zvi Hauser tweeted: “Netanyahu surprises almost every week: [He] almost annexed the [Jordan] Valley, almost applied [Israeli] law to Maalei Adumim, almost cleared Khan al-Ahmar and now almost canceled the freeze that [he] imposed on building in Har Homa,” Zvi Hauser tweets.

Hauser, a member of the Telem faction in Blue and White, is a former cabinet secretary under Netanyahu.