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Occupied Jerusalem: Israel's Defence Ministry has revived a plan it had shelved under US pressure to build a new Jewish colony in the occupied West Bank, government officials said on Thursday.
A ministry committee approved the construction of 20 housing units in Maskiot, an abandoned military base in the Jordan Valley for some of the families removed from colonies in the Gaza Strip during Israel's pullout in 2005, the officials said.
But the project cannot go ahead without approval from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
Such a move would probably draw further opposition from the United States, which is trying to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians before President George W. Bush leaves office in January.
"We condemn this Israeli decision in the strongest possible terms," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat. "This is undermining us, and killing and destroying the peace process."
Asked about the Maskiot plan, Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said the prime minister had yet to receive any new request to build homes there.
"Israel will continue to honour our commitments," Regev said. He said there will be no new colonies and no expansion of existing colonies, and no expropriation of land.
Olmert has continued to allow building within West Bank colonies that Israel considers to be part of Jerusalem and which it says it will keep in any peace agreement.
The Palestinians say colonies, which the World Court has deemed illegal, could deny them a viable and contiguous state.
In 2006, the United States pressured Israel to halt plans to build homes in Maskiot, saying it would violate the terms of a US-backed peace road map.
The road map calls for a halt to building Jewish colonies in the West Bank and for Palestinians to rein in fighters.
Israel Radio said a revival of the Maskiot plan was part of a deal between the Defence Ministry and colony leaders under which colonists would agree to evacuate West Bank outposts they established without Israeli government approval.
"Twenty units in the Jordan Valley is significant, as there are only 1,000 (for Israelis) in the entire Jordan Valley," Dubi Tal, head of the area's local Israeli council, told Israel Radio.
Israel's Peace Now movement, which opposes Jewish colonies in the West Bank, said 'capitulation to the colonists" would kill chances for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
rampage
colonists attack village
Palestinian security officials said more than 20 Jewish colonists attacked a Palestinian village in the West Bank yesterday, smashing cars and windows and cutting electricity wires.
No injuries were reported in the incident in the village of Burin near Nablus. Palestinian policemen said dozens of houses and cars were damaged, and that shots were fired in the air when Israeli soldiers arrived on the scene.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said there were scuffles outside the village, between Palestinians and Israelis on the road to the nearby colony of Yitzhar.
When police and soldiers intervened to restore order, a colonist snatched a soldier's gun and fired in the air before being disarmed and arrested, Rosenfeld and the military said.
Rosenfeld said the colonists had been burning tyres on the road in protest at the demolition by Israeli authorities of an unauthorised structure near Yitzhar when Palestinians began pelting them and passing Israeli motorists with rocks.
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