Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi says Israeli plans to build new homes in neighborhood of Gilo is proof Israel does not desire peace.
The Arab League said Thursday that Israel's plan to build new homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, which lies beyond the Green Line, was proof of its lack of desire for peace.
Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi described the construction as a "scandalous violation of international law."
He also criticized United States policy in the Middle East, saying that as a mediator between the Israelis and Palestinians it had failed to halt settlement activity.
The Jerusalem District Planning Committee announced Tuesday that it had approved the construction of 1,100 homes in Gilo, a neighborhood in southern Jerusalem built on land captured by Israel in the June 1967 war.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Western and Arab complaints that the planned construction of new homes in Gilo would complicate Middle East peace efforts, saying that Gilo is not a settlement or an outpost.
"Gilo is a neighborhood in the very heart of Jerusalem about five minutes from the center of town," Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev said.
In every peace plan on the table in the past 18 years Gilo "stays part of Jerusalem and therefore this planning decision in no way contradicts" the current Israel government's desire for peace based on two states for the two peoples, he added.
Netanyahu also stressed the construction approval announced on Tuesday was a "preliminary planning decision."
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