Israel on Wednesday expanded part of its municipal boundary for Jerusalem, a city at the core of the conflict with Palestinians, and announced plans to build 50,000 homes for Jews and Arabs there over the next two decades.
Officials said land annexed for the expansion came from a kibbutz on the edge of occupied territory where Palestinians seek statehood and cast the move as part of an anniversary celebration of Israel's capture of East Jerusalem in a 1967 war.
Separately, members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rightist cabinet attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a recently built Jewish settlement in a largely Palestinian populated part of East Jerusalem, underscoring disputes that have dogged now-stalemated Middle East diplomacy for decades. Israel annexed East Jerusalem as part of its capital - a status never recognised internationally - decades ago and Netanyahu repeated in a speech in Washington on Tuesday that Israel would not cede any of the city under a future peace deal.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who heads a powerful Orthodox Jewish party in Netanyahu's governing coalition, told reporters invited to his office on Wednesday that "Jerusalem is Israel's eternal capital."