Last update - 00:00 14/12/2007
Government officials: Har Homa row sparked by 'two bureaucrats'
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
Two Housing Ministry bureaucrats unintentionaly set off a crisis between Israel and the Palestinian Authority - as well as international condemnation of Israel - when they signed a tender last week for the construction of 307 housing units in East Jerusalem's Har Homa neighborhood, Israeli officials said Thursday.
"This affair has sabotaged negotiations and cast a shadow on the international donor states meeting next week," a senior government official told Haaretz. "Because of a miserably timed, rash bureaucratic decision, we must prove anew that we are serious."
Officials said that civil servants Sarah Zimmerman and Dubi Gal, who had approved the tender, had no idea it would provoke such a row.
"In past years, Zimmerman was even accused of delaying issuing of construction permits," a Ministry of Housing and Construction official said. "As far as they were concerned, it was just another tender."
Since the crisis began last week, Israel has been condemned by the U.S., UN and EU for okaying the plan to build in East Jerusalem, construction Palestinians see as undermining their goal of turning that part of the city into the future capital of a Palestinian state.
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