JERUSALEM, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said the approval of the East Jerusalem housing project announced last week was destructive, reported local daily Ha'aretz.
Netanyahu made the remarks at a weekly cabinet meeting, as he is still grappling with the fallout of the dramatic development, which saw an Israeli Interior Ministry committee announce its decision to go ahead with a plan to build 1,600 new Jewish homes in East Jerusalem during an ongoing visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.
The Israeli premier, who apologized for the "unfortunate timing " of what was widely seen as a slap in the face of the visiting veep, also reiterated to his ministers that he had set up a committee to investigate the mishap, which he said "should not have happened," and to establish a mechanism to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu underscored the significance of the Israeli-U.S. ties, and urged his ministers to keep cool. "We opened the newspapers today and read all kinds of commentaries and estimates about the crisis with the United States. I suggest that we avoid getting carried away and calm down," Netanyahu was quoted by local news service Ynet as saying. "We have already seen crises and what we need is composure."
The project has drawn harsh condemnation from Biden, the White House, the United Nations, the European Union and across the rest of the world, and cast a thick shadow over the U.S.-mediated indirect talks on which the Jewish state and the Palestinians had just agreed to embark.
While offering partial apology, the Israeli leadership has shown no intention to rescind the building plan in East Jerusalem, while the Palestinians, who were infuriated by the Israeli plan and had already challenged U.S. peace-making efforts in the face of continued settlement expansion, have warned that they would not enter the indirect parley until the Israeli side nullifies the project.
The incident also once again notably strained Israeli-U.S. relationship. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said over the weekend that what had happened during Biden's visit was insulting to the United State and that Netanyahu as prime minister should be responsible for the conduct of his administration. Local media said that these harsh comments sent shocks to the Jewish state.
The two allies spent the better part of the last year sparring over the settlement issue, with the U.S. government under President Barack Obama calling for a freeze of settlement construction both in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and the Netanyahu administration insisting on allowing the so-called " natural growth" of the settlements and refusing to stage any restraint upon Jewish construction in East Jerusalem.
