Israel's deputy prime minister responded on Sunday to US criticism of plans to build homes on occupied land in the Jerusalem area by saying parts of the city must be given to the Palestinians to avoid losing US support.
But Haim Ramon told Israeli radio that Israel would not give up the Jewish settlement where the building plan announced last week sparked Palestinian anger and a warning from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that it risked harming a peace process she helped relaunch last month at the Annapolis conference.
Israel has rejected criticism of a tender for some 300 more homes and other units at Har Homa-which Arabs call Abu Ghneim-on the grounds that it annexed the land and placed it inside Jerusalem city boundaries it drew after occupying the West Bank in 1967. That annexation is not recognised internationally.
Ramon said, however, that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's opponents were being unrealistic in hoping for US support for any peace plan that would give the Jewish state all the present Jerusalem municipality, which includes Arab East Jerusalem and other territory annexed from the West Bank, as its capital.