Israel flaunts Jerusalem, tells Obama off

[TriWooOx]

Quote:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that he will make no concessions on Jerusalem (al-Quds) -- a key area claimed by the Palestinians.

"Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours," Netanyahu said Thursday after a visit to the United States where President Barack Obama opposed Israeli efforts to stonewall the formation of a Palestinian state.

Directly addressing the US administration -- plagued by the influence of Israeli lobby groups on American politics --, Netanyahu took Obama to task for suggesting that the Israeli-annexed city should be returned to the Palestinians.

"The new US administration informs us with intolerable ease that we have to give up Jerusalem," Netanyahu said at a state ceremony at Ammunition Hill in East al-Quds to mark Jerusalem Day.

"With all due respect, the US president sees the American interest and does not know that Jerusalem is not a territorial issue, but a much deeper one… the hope of two thousand years/the land of Zion and Jerusalem," he said.

Netanyahu's remarks have caused considerable consternation among Palestinians who see the city as the capital of their future state.

Dozens of Palestinians rallied on Thursday in an attempt to denounce the Israeli claim to the holy city.

The United States has long supported Israel by vetoing UN Security Council resolutions against Tel Aviv, blocking all world efforts to end the nearly-60-year-old conflict over the city.

In the face of its currently marred image, however, the US has attempted to distance itself from the Israeli quest for a solely Jewish Israel but has managed to do little to confront the Zionist land grab and the ongoing aggression against the native population.

Israel captured east al-Quds in the 1967 Six-Day War and expropriated 6,000 acres (2,430 hectares), or over one third of the area, which was privately owned by Palestinians.

Tel Aviv then constructed thousands of places for Jewish settlers to live in the city. More than 285,000 Israelis currently live in the buildings -- considered by the international community as illegally constructed.

The government of Netanyahu has so far refused to endorse the two-state solution or to freeze Israeli settlement expansion work in the West Bank and has continued the imposition of a nearly-two-year-old blockade on the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=95581...ionid=351020202