Two Jerusalem officials say Israel has frozen plans for new construction in the city's disputed eastern sector despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's declarations to the contrary.
One city councilman says top Jerusalem city hall officials told him Netanyahu's office verbally ordered a construction freeze. Another councilman says two committees that review construction plans on weekly basis have barely met since U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's March visit.
Haaretz learned two weeks ago that recent tensions with the United States had brought upon a de facto construction freeze, with the building projects requiring the approval of Jerusalem's district planning committee has been on hold for more than a month.
Staff members of the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee had told Haaretz at the time that they had been instructed to halt their work in an effort to spare Israel further embarrassing incidents like the March announcement, during Biden's visit to Israel, of plans to expand the Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem.
Architects have said district committee chairwoman Ruth Yosef is not even signing off on plans that have already been approved, causing a backlog. The district committee has not met for over a month and upcoming hearings have been canceled.
The architects say when they ask about the reason for the freeze on committee activity they are told it is because of U.S. President Barack Obama. The stoppage is even affecting approval by Arab developers for Palestinian residents of the city. The freeze is also liable to affect plans to fence off the Gazelle Valley in the western part of the city to protect a herd of gazelles that have been attacked by packs of stray dogs.
The Jerusalem municipality responded at the time to the Haaretz report by saying that it was showing sensitivity in light of the circumstances, but adding there was no intention to stop the work of the local committee.