Israel Approves Construction in West Bank

by RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI

Israel has authorized construction of 117 homes in one of the West Bank’s largest settlements and approved preliminary plans for another 3,000 housing units there, officials said Tuesday.

The decision came despite repeated U.S. appeals that Israel freeze settlement expansion and threatened to raise tensions with the United States just days before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon travels to New York to address the U.N. General Assembly. He is expected to meet with President Bush and other leaders.

The plans also drew swift condemnations from the Palestinians, who claim all the West Bank for part of a future independent state.

The new construction is planned in Ariel, a sprawling settlement of nearly 18,000 people deep inside the West Bank.

Ariel’s mayor, Ron Nachman, said the government recently approved construction of the units in the center of town, part of a plan frozen in the mid-1990s by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The Defense Ministry and officials in Sharon’s office confirmed the project’s approval.

Nachman told The Associated Press the Defense Ministry also has approved preliminary plans for a 3,000-home neighborhood in the southern part of his settlement. The project would nearly double the size of Ariel.

Defense Ministry officials confirmed the plan received initial approval, though actual construction would need further authorization. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of department regulations.

Construction in Jewish settlements is an especially contentious issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians want all settlements dismantled so they can establish an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war.

I think we have 3,000 more obstacles to peace and we will have, if this program is carried out, 3,000 reasons to undermine President Bush's efforts for a two-state solution,'' Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. The United States, along with the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, repeatedly has demanded that Israel freeze all settlement expansion as called for in the internationally backedroad map’’ peace plan.

We've been clear with the Israelis on their obligations under the 'road map' and President Bush has specifically called on the Israelis not only to remove illegal outposts but to stop settlement expansion,'' U.S. Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle said. Israel is in the final stages of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. But Sharon has repeatedly said he plans to strengthen and expand major West Bank settlement blocs, including Ariel. Sharon says Israel will maintain these blocs, where most of the 246,000 West Bank settlers live, under a final peace deal with the Palestinians. Throughout Sharon's four years in power, settlement construction, especially in major enclaves, has gone on unfettered.All the prime ministers have built the settlement blocs, but I built more than all of them,’’ Sharon was quoted as saying by the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. Settlement continues there and will continue.'' According to the settlement-monitoring group Peace Now, 3,500 to 4,000 housing units are under construction in the five largest settlement blocs. Peace Now spokesman Dror Etkes said the construction began in the past 18 months, after the 2003 launch of the road map. Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said in remarks published last week that Israel has frozen plans to expand Maaleh Adumin, its largest West Bank settlement, and will only revive the project with U.S. consent. Expanding that settlement would cut off east Jerusalem from its West Bank hinterland, making it virtually impossible for the Palestinians to establish a capital in that part of the city. Following the unilateral evacuation of Gaza's 21 settlements and four small enclaves in the West Bank, Sharon has been trying to shore up support with Likud hard-liners.The decision of the government to approve an additional 3,000 housing units is a clear statement that this is the policy of strengthening the settlement blocs,’’ Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim, a Likud hard-liner, told Israel Radio.

Boim added that after Gaza, there would be no further unilateral pullbacks from territory claimed by the Palestinians.

Those who think there ... will be a second and third disengagement are mistaken. Not with this government,'' he said. Cabinet minister Haim Ramon said he would request clarifications about the Ariel construction plans but cast doubt on whether the vision would ever become a reality.Even in Tel Aviv there is a master plan that one day the city will be like New York,’’ said Ramon, a member of the centrist Labor Party. ``To build 3,000 housing units means building a new Ariel, and this is a mistake because this will cause damage in the international arena.’’

In Gaza, meanwhile, a mysterious blast after nightfall Monday leveled a building, killing four people and wounding at least 30, residents and hospital officials said.

The violent Islamic militant group Hamas blamed Israel, but the Israeli military said it was not involved. The Palestinian Interior Ministry said the house was used by Hamas to manufacture bombs, and explosives detonated accidentally. (AP)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5259082,00.html