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Reporter Linda Gradstein updates us on the ongoing controversy over a planned settlement in East Jerusalem.

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. The Obama administration has made it clear. It wants Israel to freeze construction of Jewish settlements. That position has caused friction between the two allies. Israel maintains it needs to accommodate an expanding settler population. Well today Israel got some support from a former US presidential candidate. Republican Mike Huckabee went to east Jerusalem to speak out for settlements there. Linda Gradstein as the story.

LINDA GRADSTEIN: Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher, is in Israel as a guest of the Jewish group Ateret Cohanim. It’s been behind several controversial building projects in east Jerusalem. Today Huckabee toured several Jewish enclaves there including one project under construction in the Arab neighborhood of Ras al-Amud. It’s funded by an American business man. Daniel Luria is with Ateret Cohanim.

DANIEL LURIA: This is stage two of the project Maalei Hazeitim, the heights of olives, that the world said would never happen. And it has happened. A dream has been realized. Already stage one there are 50 families. There’s an educational institute. There’s learning. There are families, children. There is life once again on the Mount of Olives.

GRADSTEIN: As the Muslim call to prayer echoed from a nearby mosque and a crane swung building materials high overhead, Huckabee criticized the Obama administration’s call for a freeze on settlements.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Well the timing was not specifically tied to the Obama administration’s policies. But maybe its providential that it coincides because it does point out that those policies are a dramatic change from the position that the United States government, under both Democrat and Republican presidents, have taken particularly in actually halting peace talks while 20 families moved within a settlement area.

GRADSTEIN: Huckabee also said east Jerusalem which Palestinians say must be the capital of a future Palestinian state must always remain part of Israel.

HUCKABEE: When I hear people talk about well let’s have two states holding the same piece of real estate. I mean realistically would we accept that in the United States. As an American I can tell you we most certainly would not. I don’t know how it’s workable to have two sovereign governments claiming control over the same piece of real estate.

GRADSTEIN: On a busy street corner in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem Maher Hannoun and his family sit on plastic chairs outside what used to be their home. Two weeks ago Israeli police evicted them and another family. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the homes belong to Jewish settlers who had purchased them and that the Arab families had been living there illegally for decades. Hannoun says he has documents from the 1950s, before Israel conquered and annexed east Jerusalem, showing the house belongs to him. Hannoun said groups like Ateret Cohanim are trying to take over as much of East Jerusalem as possible.

HANOUN: Here our small neighborhood here is in the middle and there is at the west of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. They’re planning also to build a small settlement and [INAUDIBLE]. Also they’re planning to build settlement which is mean they’re planning to build a wall of settlement but we are here the original people. We are born this land. So they don’t have any right to do that.

GRADSTEIN: Secretary of State Hilary Clinton  has criticized Israel for the evictions calling them “deeply regrettable.” She’s urged Israel to stop what she called further provocative action. But a few blocks away another controversial Jewish housing project is planned at the Shepherd Hotel. The Obama administration has demanded that Israel suspend the project. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the demand saying East Jerusalem is part of Israel’s capital. For The World I’m Linda Gradstein in Jerusalem.

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