JERUSALEM
ISRAEL will reveal plans to build 1,400 settler homes in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem to coincide with the weekend release of Palestinian prisoners, military radio said on Friday.
A third batch of Palestinian prisoners is due to be released on Sunday as part of conditions that Israel agreed to when it committed to resume US-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians in July.
Palestinians have warned repeatedly that settlement building destroys the fragile peace process which US Secretary of State John Kerry struggled to revive after a three-year hiatus.
Military radio said 600 new housing units would be build in the existing settlement of Ramat Shlomo in east Jerusalem, a mostly Arab sector annexed by Israel, while the remainder would be constructed in West Bank settlements.
Israel has come in for repeated criticism from the United States and most of the international community for pressing ahead with a drive to build Jewish settlements on land Palestinians want for their future state.
Kerry and the European Union earlier this month urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay plans to announce new settlement construction.
Media reports quoted Kerry as telling Netanyahu “to exercise maximum restraint in announcing new construction.” But Netanyahu last week said nothing would stop his government from pushing ahead with the constructions.
“We will not stop, even for a moment, building our country and becoming stronger, and developing... the settlement enterprise,” Netanyahu told members of his rightwing Likud party last week.
A senior Israeli official said on Thursday the Israeli government will announce tenders for new homes in tandem with freeing the next batch of Palestinian prisoners.
AFP
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