Israel to expand W.Bank settlements: report

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has
approved more than 290 new settlement homes in the West Bank
despite Israel’s obligation to freeze such construction under a
U.S.-backed peace plan, a newspaper report said on Wednesday.

The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported Mofaz authorized
the settlement construction shortly before he pulled out of a
right-wing Likud party leadership race and bolted to Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon’s centrist Kadima party.

It quoted Mofaz’s office as saying “there was no political
significance or any political connection to these approvals.”

The newspaper said that Mofaz authorized the construction
of 200 homes in Maale Adumim, the largest settlement in the
West Bank, 40 housing units in Ariel and dozens of homes in
Bracha, an isolated settlement near the West Bank city of
Nablus.

It said that Mofaz’s approval was an apparent effort to win
points with Likud voters in a party primary election that he
was contending.

Mofaz has been accused of political expediency for quitting
Likud for Kadima despite sending personal letters to Likud
voters assuring them that he was staying in Likud for the long
haul. The letters arrived at voters’ homes after he announced
he was leaving for Kadima.

The additional settlement construction will likely anger
Israel’s most powerful ally, the United States, which sees
settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank as contravening
the road map to a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967
Middle East war. It withdrew from Gaza in September in a move
that Palestinians fear was intended to hold on to large tracts
of West Bank land.