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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in an interview which aired Sunday on CBS that the White House’s rebuke of Israeli construction in Jerusalem goes “against American values”.
In the interview, which was recorded on Thursday and of which excerpts were quoted by The Associated Press (AP), Netanyahu said he did not accept restrictions on where Jews could live, and said that Jerusalem’s Arabs and Jews should be able to buy homes wherever they want.
He said he was “baffled” by the American condemnation. “It’s against the American values. And it doesn’t bode well for peace,” Netanyahu told CBS. “The idea that we’d have this ethnic purification as a condition for peace, I think it’s anti-peace.” The recently backlash against Israel is mainly over a plan to build 2,610 new homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat Hamatos. The housing units were slated for construction since 2012 and were given final approval last week.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki criticized the move, using unusually harsh language in doing so. She said the step would send a “troubling message” and added the construction would “poison the atmosphere not only with the Palestinians but also with the very Arab governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to build relations.”
Netanyahu later fired back at the United States’ criticism, telling NBC News' Andrea Mitchell that the U.S. should study the facts before it criticizes Israel over its construction. "I think the important thing is to just get the facts right. I mean start with the facts," he told Mitchell.
Psaki later rejected Netanyahu’s claims, saying, “I think we have our information clear, and we responded to the facts on the ground.” The White House declined to comment on Netanyahu’s statements in the CBS interview, noted AP.
Source: Arutz Sheva
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