The British Government has directly intervened in the controversy over Jewish colonisation in Arab East Jerusalem after the formation of plans to build an illegal settlement within 50 metres of its Consulate General in the city.
The British Ambassador Tom Phillips, has raised serious concerns with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert‘s office over proposals to demolish the empty Palestinian Shepherd‘s Hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, and build apartments for 122 Jewish settler families in its place.
The British have told the Israeli authorities that the plans, which if implemented, could not only change the character of the historic and highly sensitive East Jerusalem district, but also pose a serious security risk to its diplomatic mission.
Sheikh Jarrah borders - on the Arab side - the "green line" that denoted Israel‘s border up to the Six Day War in 1967, and includes a number of other foreign diplomatic missions to the Palestinians beside the British consulate, as well as a mosque and Palestinian residential homes.
When right wing settlers occupied another small enclave, named Shimon Hatzadik, in the same district five years ago, their leaders indicated that part of the purpose was to help cut off the Palestinian core in the Old City from the highly populated northern Jerusalem Arab neighbourhoods of Beit Hanina and Shuafat. This would threaten Palestinian "contiguity" in East Jerusalem which Palestinian negotiators have always identified as the future capital of a Palestinian state.
Danny Seidemann, a prominent Israeli lawyer who specialises in challenging Jewish settlement in Arab areas of Jerusalem said yesterday that the building was owned by an offshore firm controlled by Irwin Moskowitz, a right-wing American businessman whom he described as "the patron saint of settlers in East Jerusalem."
Dr Moskowitz has acquired a number of properties in Arab sectors of the city for use by settlers in what most of the international community, including Britain, regards as a violation of international law.
Encroaching Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, beside creating potential flashpoints between settlers and local Arab residents, also serves seriously to complicate any prospect of a negotiated settlement in the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
The Jerusalem municipality said it had not yet received a planning application to develop the site. But British officials said they had seen detailed proposals for the settlement.
Mr Seidemann said yesterday while the proposals were "preliminary, in the pre-planning stage" they were more than a "twinkling in someone‘s eye". He said the proposals were "part of the battle under the radar for control of the Old City and the historic visual basin around it". He added that East Jerusalem settlements were "symbols of displacement of Palestinians and of exclusivity in a nasty kind of Jewish narrative that most Jews don‘t adhere to".
Mr Seidemann added that for the British Consulate implementation of the plans would be the equivalent of waking up and "finding a dinosaur in your living room".
British officials are widely believed to have been the main authors of a still unpublished report prepared for EU foreign ministers in 2005 by all the EU consulates detailing how expansion of "illegal settlements" was one of many developments that showed a "clear Israeli intention" to turn the annexation of East Jerusalem - the legality of which the international community has never accepted - into a "concrete fact."
A spokeswoman for the Consulate General said yesterday that British " concerns over settlements are well known" and confirmed that the Shepherd‘s Hotel issue had been raised with the Israeli government.