Announcement of 1,450 new homes comes ahead of key Washington meeting

On the eve of crucial talks with the White House over halting its
ongoing takeover of the occupied West Bank, Israel’s defence ministry
yesterday confirmed plans for a massive expansion of a settlement near
Ramallah.

The news will be seen as a major setback to US
efforts to stop the growth of illegal settlements, and as a calculated
snub to the Obama administration by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It
came as the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, flew to Washington in an
attempt to reach a compromise with the American special envoy to the
Middle East, George Mitchell. The US, which has often turned a blind
eye towards the activity of Jewish settlers in the past, now says the
building must stop to enable a viable Palestinian state to emerge
alongside Israel through negotiations.

The planned expansion to
the north-east of Jersualem was acknowledged in an affidavit submitted
to the supreme court by Mr Barak. The document outlines plans by the
government to relocate about 50 hard-line settler families from the
unauthorised outpost of Migron to the Adam settlement, 3km away.

The document says a master plan has been drawn up calling for the
construction of 1,450 new units at Adam, a huge number in West Bank
terms, although it is expected to take several years to work its way
through the approvals process. The ministry said it had given the green
light only for the 50 dwellings and any additional units would require
its separate approval.

The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,
speaking in Ramallah yesterday, said the Palestinian Authority would
stick to its refusal to resume negotiations with Israel unless there
was freeze on the construction of settlements. His leading negotiator,
Saeb Erekat, said of the Adam expansion: “The Israelis are determined
to undermine the two-state solution. When the whole international
community is speaking in one voice on the need to stop settlement
activities they answer with this.”

The expansion of Adam is part
of a deal struck by the government with the Yesha Council that
represents most settlers. The stated goal is to enable a non-violent
evacuation of Migron, one of dozens of hard-core settler outposts in
the West Bank that were never authorised by the government but have
enjoyed its tacit and, at times, open support for years. With Mr Obama
in power, Israel is under pressure to finally make good on a commitment
in the 2003 peace “road map” to freeze settlements and evacuate the
outposts.

In Migron, the pro-Palestinian lobby group Peace Now
has petitioned the supreme court to evict settlers who are squatting on
what the government concedes is privately owned Palestinian property.
The government has resisted doing so and now appears intent on using
the perceived need to placate potentially violent settlers as
justification for expanding the more established settlements. Eitan
Broshi, an adviser to Mr Barak, indicated yesterday that the
government’s policy was to enable outpost settlers “to enter nearby
settlements” so that “violent removal and bloodshed” can be avoided. He
said the Americans would understand this policy. They “know what an
evacuation entails and what challenges face us. They know that we have
to undertake complicated internal processes”.

However, Yossi
Alpher, a leading Israeli political analyst, said the plan was a
scandal. “This runs totally counter to the spirit of the current
discussions on the settlement freeze,” added Mr Alpher, a former
director of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies.

Israel has
said it must be able to continue with building in the settlements, so
that “natural growth” can continue and young couples can move into
bigger flats. But Mr Alpher believes that, in the face of opposition
from a determined Obama administration, Israel would be forced to drop
its “natural growth” demand.