Says Palestinians can rename city 'whatever they want'
By Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM – A top member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government today announced Israel "must" give up sections of Jerusalem for a future Palestinian state, even conceding the Palestinians can rename Jerusalem "to whatever they want."
"We must come today and say, friends, the Jewish neighborhoods, including Har Homa, will remain under Israeli sovereignty, and the Arab neighborhoods will be the Palestinian capital, which they will call Jerusalem or whatever they want," said Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon.
Positions held by Ramon, a ranking member of Olmert's Kadima party, are largely considered to be reflective of Israeli government policy.  
Ramon's statements follow last month's U.S.-sponsored Annapolis summit at which Olmert committed to aim at completing negotiations by next year to create a Palestinian state, with Israel expected to evacuate swaths of Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank.
Ramon said due to the city's demographics, Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem "should not be under Israeli sovereignty, because they pose a threat to Jerusalem being the capital of a Jewish Israel."
About 231,000 Arabs live in Jerusalem, mostly in eastern neighborhoods. The city has an estimated total population of 724,000.
Ramon ...   more »

Herb Keinon ,
Israel and the US are heading for a showdown over construction in Jerusalem's Har Homa neighborhood, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that building there does not help create confidence in peace negotiations, and Construction and Housing Minister Ze'ev Boim responded that the construction will continue.
Rice, in comments to reporters after her meeting with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in Brussels on Friday, said she brought up the issue of a recent tender to build some 307 units in Har Homa with Livni.
"I've made [it] very clear, about seeking clarification on precisely what this means," Rice said. "I've made clear that we're in a time when the goal is to build maximum confidence between the parties and this doesn't help to build confidence."
Rice said that "there just shouldn't be anything that might try and judge final status, the outcomes of final status negotiations. It's even more important now that we are really on the eve of the beginning of those negotiations."
Boim, however, was quoted by Army Radio on Saturday as saying that nothing could prevent the new construction in Har Homa since it was within the capital's municipal borders.
"Rice must ...   more »

The newspapers here in Israel made for sobering reading this weekend.
In the words of a visiting compatriot in the cause of Christian Zionism, it is as if, after years of moving towards a cliff in Israel-US relations, we have suddenly arrived, and tipped over the edge.
The United States has betrayed the trust of its once “faithful friend” in the Middle East, and things are spiraling at an alarming speed - seemingly out of control.
Israelis today believe that Washington successfully worked to lure them to Annapolis by promising to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Jewish state against Iran’s fevered efforts to obtain, deploy and possibly use nuclear weapons.
Largely as a result of this “guaranteed” alliance, the Olmert government went to Annapolis despite the refusal of the Palestinian Arabs to, among other things, recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Once there, believing that America truly has Israel’s best interests at heart, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to work towards the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of the Bush presidency, and gave the US the right to judge whether or not Jerusalem is complying with its commitments under the Road Map.
And then, with this Israeli commitment ...   more »