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Netanyahu: Israel Has Been Building in Jerusalem for Decades

(Jerusalem Post) Herb Keinon - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview Monday: "In a metropolitan area like Jerusalem, with three-quarters of a million people, there is planning that takes place for new projects. People have families, families have children, and communities grow: they grow in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and they grow in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. I have to say that this is one of the areas where Israel's massive planning bureaucracy gets full international attention. We have so many planning stages, so many phases of approval, that every time a plan moves through one of these stages, it gets world headlines. It shouldn't." "I don't think there is anything new. We plan in Jerusalem. We build in Jerusalem. Period. The same way Israeli governments have been doing for 44 years, since the end of the 1967 war. We build in Jewish neighborhoods, the Arabs build in Arab neighborhoods, that is the way the life of this city goes on and develops for its Jewish and non-Jewish residents alike." Regarding the Palestinian refusal to recognize any Jewish connection to the land, he said: "Any fair minded observer can tell you whether the Jewish people have been here for 4,000 years or not. And when that is ignored completely by the Palestinian side, you know something is wrong. Why can't they utter the words 'the Jewish people and the Jewish state?' There is a problem there, and you can't build hope by shutting your eyes and saying it doesn't matter - of course it matters; this is what this conflict is all about."
2011-09-28 00:00:00
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