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| Israel approves nearly 1,200 new illegal settlement homes |
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.jpg) Israel's housing minister on Sunday gave final approval to build nearly 1,200 illegal settlement units, just three days before Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are to resume in Baitul-Muqaddas (Jerusalem).
There was no immediate Palestinian comment, though the announcement by Housing Minister Uri Ariel was bound to deepen the atmosphere of distrust as the two sides head into talks after a five-year freeze, AP reported.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had long insisted he would not resume talks without an Israeli settlement freeze, arguing that the expansion of settlements is pre-empting the outcome of negotiations.
In the end, Abbas agreed to enter talks without a settlement freeze.
In Sunday's announcement, the Housing Ministry said 1,187 apartments had been given final approval, the last stage before issuing tenders to contractors. Of those, 793 will be built in neighborhoods for Jews in east Jerusalem, annexed by Israel shortly after the 1967 Mideast war.
In addition, 394 apartments are to be built in several large West Bank settlements, including Maaleh Adumim, Efrat and Ariel. The latter sits in the heart of the West Bank, and its expansion could be particularly problematic for negotiators trying to carve out a viable Palestinian state.
The housing minister, a leading member of the pro-settler party Jewish Home, said construction would continue.
"No country in the world takes orders from other countries where it can build and where it can't," Ariel said in his statement. "We will continue to market housing and build in the entire country… This is the right thing at the present time, for Zionism and for the economy."
The United States said last week that Israel and the Palestinian Authority would resume the Middle East peace talks on August 14.
“Negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians will be resuming August 14 in Jerusalem and will be followed by a meeting in Jericho (in the occupied West Bank),” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on August 8.
The representatives of Israel and the Palestinian Authority met last month in Washington. The meeting was the first direct negotiations in three years.
Psaki said U.S. envoys Martin Indyk and Frank Lowenstein would go to the Middle East to help facilitate the talks.
The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.
More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967.
The United Nations and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbids construction on occupied lands.
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