Israel to build 300 new homes in WB

Disabled Palestinian youths take part during a rally in Gaza City yesterday to show support to prisoners staging a mass hunger strike since last week. A significant proportion of the 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are on an open-ended hunger strike to try to win better conditions. They are demanding an across-the-board improvement in their conditions including mandatory visiting rights, an end to body searches and the removal of glass barriers which separate them from their family during visits. PHOTO: AFP

A total of 200 of the housing units would be built in Har-Gilo while a further 101 would be constructed in Haradar, added the spokeswoman of the body which is headed by Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The announcement comes after it emerged that Washington had given its tacit approval for expansion of existing Jewish settlements to accommodate "natural growth", in apparent contradiction of the US-backed roadmap peace plan which calls for a freeze on all settlement activity.

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A report in Monday's Yediot Aharonot daily said more than 500 new houses would be built in settlements including Haradar and Har-Gilo lying close to Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Bethlehem after adjoining land had been "rezoned".

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week approved the construction of around 1,000 new homes in four of the largest of the West Bank settlements in a move which was widely interpreted as a bid to placate opponents of his plan to pull troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip.

Yediot reported that a total of 2,167 construction permits for West Bank houses had been issued this year even though only 908 houses were put on the market last year.

It means that the number of homes constructed in the West Bank this year will account for 12 percent of the national total even though only 3.6 percent of the Israeli population live there.

The roadmap peace plan has made next to no progress since it was launched last year amid accusations by the Palestinians that the Israelis are blatantly violating their commitment to freeze settlement activity.

Israel in turn accuses the Palestinian Authority of failing to meet its side of the bargain by failing to halt attacks by millitant groups.

While backing the roadmap, US President George W. Bush has said that the size of some of the largest settlements meant it was "unrealistic" to expect Israel to withdraw totally from the West Bank in any final settlement.

Palestinians reacted furiously on Sunday after it emerged that the United States had given the nod to further construction in existing settlements, saying such a move would wreck the roadmap.

The international community considers all Israeli settlement in the occupied territories to be illegal.