Israeli group says settlements rise sharply

Rice, in Jerusalem, says work does not aid peace effort

A laborer worked yesterday at a construction site in a settlement near Jerusalem known to Israelis as Har Homa and to Palestinians as Jabal Abu Ghneim. (Baz Ratner/Reuters Photo)

JERUSALEM - Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group, said in a report released yesterday that in the past year Israel has nearly doubled its settlement construction in the occupied West Bank in violation of its obligations under an American-backed peace plan.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Jerusalem to help Israeli and Palestinian leaders make progress in their negotiations, said when asked about the report that she had told Israeli officials that such building did not advance the cause of peace.

"What we need now are steps that enhance confidence between the parties and anything that undermines confidence between the parties ought to be avoided," she told reporters, with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel standing at her side.

For her part, Livni said that settlement building should not influence the negotiations because the goal of the leaders of the two sides should be "not to let any kind of noises that relate to the situation on the ground these days enter the negotiation room."

Earlier, Rice made clear that neither Israelis nor Palestinians had fully lived up to their obligations under the terms of negotiation. Israel is supposed to end all settlement building and remove illegal settlement outposts while the Palestinians are supposed to dismantle terrorist infrastructures.

Negotiators, who had been hoping for a full two-state peace framework between the Palestinian Authority and Israel to be completed by the end of the Bush administration, have been cautioning that such an aim appears out of reach.

Most say they prefer to continue the process rather than try to put together a partial document, although Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who will be stepping down, seems eager for some agreement before his term ends.

The Peace Now report on settlements, based on aerial photographs, visits and government data, says that more than 1,000 new buildings are going up in the West Bank, including 2,600 housing units.

It says that for the first five months of 2008, construction in the settlements was 1.8 times greater than in the same period of 2007.

Peace Now opposes Israeli building on land captured in the 1967 war, such as the West Bank, and favors facilitating the creation of a Palestinian state there. It is nevertheless considered a reliable source of settlement information.

According to its report, more than half of the building is going on beyond the separation barrier that Israel has built in recent years along the border of and inside the West Bank.

This is significant because Israeli leaders have argued that ultimately a deal with the Palestinians will allow it to hold onto several settlement blocs and neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in exchange for land swaps.

Therefore, they say, their building in East Jerusalem and close-in settlements on their side of the barrier should not be cause for concern over ill-will.

The Peace Now report shows that indeed the building in East Jerusalem is intensive, with the number of tenders for houses there up from 46 in 2007 to 1,761 this year.

Still, American and Palestinian officials reject the idea that such construction is harmless to the negotiating process.

In addition, the Peace Now report challenges the government's assertions that it is limiting its construction to the western side of the barrier by showing that beyond the barrier, construction continues apace.

It also says that in the illegal outposts that were supposed to be removed, 125 new structures have been added, including 30 permanent houses.