New Israeli homes on West Bank
2009-05-18 20:11
Tel Aviv/Ramallah - In a move certain to raise international ire, Israel is beginning the construction of the first completely new Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank in more than a decade, the Peace Now watchdog group said on Monday.
The moves come as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to attend his first meeting with US President Barack Obama later on Monday, despite US and European calls for Israel to halt its settlement activity.
US Vice President Joe Biden earlier this month called on Israel to end settlement expansion.
You're not going to like this
"You're not going to like my saying this, but (Israel should) not build more settlements (and) dismantle existing outposts," Biden told a pro-Israeli lobbying group in Washington.
Obama is expected to issue the same demand during his meeting with Netanyahu later on Monday.
Palestinians, who demand a complete end to Israeli settlement activity as a prerequisite for a peace treaty, described the Israeli move as "a blunt provocative act".
Contractors toured the site of the new Maskiyot settlement on Sunday morning, after the regional settler council issued a tender for the construction of 20 new homes on it, Peace Now said.
Maskiyot, located in the Jordan Valley at some 20km east of Nablus, would be the first new settlement to be built in the West Bank in 13 years. It would also be the first new settlement in the Jordan Valley in 26 years.
Demanded response from the US
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the "Israeli provocation" demanded response from the US "and a genuine and concrete pressure on Netanyahu that would guarantee a halt to all settlement activities."
The Maskiyot project was first mooted some three years ago, and was intended to house Jewish settler families evacuated from Gaza following Israel's 2005 unilateral pull-out from the strip.
But the project was frozen in January 2007 by then defence minister Amir Peretz following massive international pressure.
Current Defence Minister Ehud Barak, of the left-to-centre coalition Labour Party, unfroze the project when he was still a member of the outgoing Israeli government of Ehud Olmert, Peace Now said.
The project's implementation is now starting under the new government of Netanyahu, which took office following February 10 elections in which the right-wing bloc of parties won a majority of seats in Israel's parliament.
- SAPA
