Israel starts work on settlement

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday announced the start of work on a new settlement in the occupied West Bank as US envoys prepared to discuss a new peace push.

"Today, the work on the ground has begun, as I promised, to establish a new settlement for the Amona settlers," Netanyahu tweeted over a picture of a small bulldozer and a digger working on a rocky hill overlooking a vineyard.

The Amichai settlement, in the northern West Bank, is earmarked for some 40 families evicted from the wildcat outpost of Amona in February under a high court order which ruled their homes had been built illegally on private Palestinian land. It is the first new Jewish settlement in the West Bank in some 25 years. The extensive construction in the meantime has focused on expanding existing settlements.

His announcement comes a day after Trump's special representative Jason Greenblatt arrived for talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on relaunching peace talks that collapsed in 2014.

Greenblatt is to be joined by Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner today. Together they will "spearhead the peace effort" the US administration believes is possible, a White House official said.

Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, are illegal under international law and are considered one of the main obstacles to peace.