Off the wire
• S. African president Zuma condemns violence at university campuses  • Urgent: Gold nearly unchanged after two days' rally  • Interview: Construction of America's first high-speed rail is picking up pace  • Ghanaian president pledges strict fiscal discipline despite elections  • Enhanced border controls costing Austria millions per day: economic chambers  • UN chief pledges to convince S. Sudan rebel leader to return to Juba  • Spanish stock market rises 2.52 pct  • Ghanaian President Mahama pledges to consolidate democracy  • Serbian president authorizes army deployment in migrant crisis  • Arab parliament speakers to prepare anti-terrorism charter  
You are here: 　 Home

Israeli PM slams Cameron over east Jerusalem remark

Xinhua, February 26, 2016 Adjust font size:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Thursday the British Prime Minister David Cameron, a day after the latter criticized Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem.

Netanyahu accused Cameron of "forgetting" that the Israeli control is safeguarding the holy city from the radical Islam.

"Cameron, who is undoubtedly a friend of Israel, seems to have forgotten some basic facts about Jerusalem," Netanyahu said at a conference of his Likud party in the southern city of Ofakim.

"Only Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem is preventing the Islamic State and Hamas from setting fire to the holy sites in the city, as they do elsewhere in the Middle East," he said.

On Wednesday, Cameron slammed the Israeli construction in east Jerusalem, a predominantly Palestinian area.

"I am well known for being a strong friend of Israel, but I have to say the first time I visited Jerusalem and had a proper tour around that wonderful city and saw what had happened with the effective encirclement of east Jerusalem, occupied east Jerusalem, it is genuinely shocking," Cameron told the British parliament during a question session.

Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Mideast War, and later annexed east Jerusalem, in a move condemned by the international community.

The Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory are illegal under international law and the international community opposes them, saying their construction undermines prospects of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

A surge of Palestinian uprising, including frequent stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks, started in Jerusalem in mid-September over visiting rights to a site holy to both Muslims and Jews.

The violence quickly spread to Israel and the rest of the West Bank, and has so far claimed the lives of at least 170 Palestinians and 28 Israelis. Endit