Biden's Mideast Visit Mired in Controversy

JERUSALEM (March 10) – Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel and the West Bank has become a minefield of perceived snubs in the wake of Israel's announcement Monday that it will build 1,600 new homes in disputed East Jerusalem.

After a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the vice president had more harsh words for Israel.

"It's incumbent on both parties to build an atmosphere of support for negotiations and not to complicate them," he said. "Yesterday, the decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust -- the trust that we need right now in order to begin as well as produce profitable negotiations."

Abbas said Israel should reverse the decision about building the homes, while Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Israel's move makes it harder to get even indirect peace talks with Israel moving again.

"We definitely think this is a moment of great challenge to the effort led by the United States to get the political process going again," Fayyad said. The goal, he said, is "an end to the Israeli occupation and the emergence of an independent, sovereign, viable Palestinian state."

In Israel, Interior Minister Eli Yishai apologized for the timing of the announcement, saying it was not meant to embarrass Biden. He claimed that if he had anticipated the uproar in advance he would have pushed the announcement off until after the vice president left. But neither he nor the government has backed off from the plan to build the new housing units.

On Tuesday night, Biden showed up more than an hour late for a scheduled dinner with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a delay the Israeli media widely interpreted as a snub. Netanyahu insisted he didn't know in advance that the announcement was coming.

"The prime minister knows no more about every single housing project in the city of Jerusalem than President Obama knows about every single housing project in downtown Washington," Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., told Israel Television. "It's a very complex situation. There are many authorities involved in the housing business in Jerusalem. The prime minister can't know it all."

But some in Israel say he should have known about such an explosive and sensitive initiative. In Netanyahu's governing coalition, Yishai represents the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which strongly supports expansion of Jewish settlements and opposed Netanyahu's decision to freeze new building starts outside of East Jerusalem for 10 months. Some have speculated that his untimely announcement was a bid to embarrass Netanyahu into building more homes.

While Netanyahu has repeatedly said the settlement freeze does not apply to East Jerusalem, Palestinians consider it the future capital of a Palestinian state. The U.S. wants the status of East Jerusalem to be determined through negotiations, but Israel sees it as an indivisible part of its capital and vows to continue building.

Biden's trip to the region was meant to smooth some ruffled feathers in Israel. Since taking office, President Barack Obama has visited Egypt and has a trip planned later this month to Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. But he has not come to Israel, although he did visit there before he was elected.

When Obama and Netanyahu met in Washington last May, media reports suggested there was no chemistry between the two.

One key shared concern of the U.S. and Israel is Iran's ongoing quest to become a nuclear power, but even on that agenda item there are differences. Some Israeli media reports said one of Biden's primary tasks on his visit here is to make sure that Israel won't launch a unilateral military strike on Iran.