MIDDLE EAST: The Israeli government published tenders yesterday for the construction of hundreds of new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The move, which is a violation of the road map peace plan, drew a swift but rather tepid rebuke from Washington.
The construction projects are planned for three West Bank settlements. Most of the new housing units, some 530, will be built in the settlement of Betar Illit, close to Jerusalem and close to the Green Line 1967 border between Israel and the West Bank.
Another 50 units are planned for the largest West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, which has over 20,000 inhabitants and is situated a few kilometers east of Jerusalem. A further 24 will be built in Ariel, which is located in the heart of the West Bank, north of Ramallah, and is the second largest settlement with 18,000 residents.
Questioned about the new settlement construction, government spokesmen trotted out the regular explanations - that the building was meant to meet the natural expansion of the settler population. The housing ministry spokesman, Mr Koby Bleich, said the tenders were part of "a government policy by which we are to advance and develop communities in Judea and Samaria (the biblical names for the West Bank) according to their needs and natural growth."
The move drew angry Palestinian reaction. "This is evidence that the road map has been fully assassinated by an Israeli policy of settlement expansion, to which the United States is a witness," Information Minister Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo told Reuters.
The first phase of the US-backed road map calls for a total freeze in settlement building, including construction aimed at meeting the needs of natural growth. After news of the tender was published yesterday, Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said the US had "concerns about continuing settlement activity on the part of the Israelis."
Mr Powell also took Israel to task over the West Bank fence it is building. "The president continues to believe that the fence presents a problem," he told reporters.
Mr Powell said the fence was a problem to the extent it "intrudes on Palestinian land". Discussions, he added, were under way over whether the US would deduct the cost of those sections of the fence that bulge deep into the West Bank from $9 billion in loan guarantees to Israel that have already been approved.
Palestinians, who have dubbed the fence the "Berlin Wall" and the "Apartheid Wall", fear that the deeper it cuts into the West Bank, the less land they will have on which to establish a state.
Speaking to reporters at his Ramallah compound, Palestinian Authority President Mr Yasser Arafat said that "Israel is pursuing its crimes by expanding this racist and Nazi wall that expropriates land".