Israel's plans to extend the illegally annexed area of Har Homa in East Jerusalem by another 307 homes to connect it to Gilo, another illegal Jewish suburb of Bethlehem, make the Annapolis meeting seem like a bad joke. Israel sets its own agenda as it has always done, with invariable use of the US veto at the UN and disregard for international law, as exemplified by the comment made by Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev: "Israel will abide by all its obligations under the road map. Its obligations apply to the West Bank, Jerusalem is different. Jerusalem is our capital. It is Israeli sovereign territory."
In fact, under the original UN general assembly resolution 181, which partitioned Palestine, the Greater Jerusalem area, including Bethlehem, was to come under international control as a corpus seperatum. Since 1967 metropolitan Jerusalem consists of unilaterally annexed areas, which have not been recognised as legal, by any country, including the US. Most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv, the de facto capital of Israel. The surrounding suburbs of East Jerusalem are not only annexed, but are on mainly Palestinian owned and sequestrated land, which constitutes land theft. But international law, the Geneva conventions and UN resolutions 242, 446, 452 and 465 to name a few, all emphasise the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war", for Israel to cease the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and call on Israel to dismantle these settlements.
cont
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