Israel building 3,000 new settler homes: watchdog

By Dominic Evans

HILLTOP 468, West Bank (Reuters) - Israel is building 3,000 homes in Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank and their continued growth could make a viable Palestinian state impossible, the Peace Now group said on Wednesday.

The anti-settlement watchdog said the number of settlements had not risen in 2006 but their population rose by 5 percent -- three times the growth in Israel.

"The settlement blocs are becoming bigger and bigger and actually getting deeper into the West Bank," Peace Now director general Yaariv Oppenheimer told Reuters.

Oppenheimer was speaking near Hilltop 468 outpost, one of a string of settlements and outposts stretching east from Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley which Peace Now says will drive a wedge between the north and south sections of the West Bank.

To mark the release of its annual report, the group intended to take journalists on a tour of the outpost, which it says expanded last year and where eight Jewish families now live. But Israeli police blocked the road just outside it.

Pointing to the nearby urban sprawl of Maaleh Adumim, home to 30,000 Jewish settlers, Peace Now activist Dror Etkes said the expansion of the settlement "bubble" east of Jerusalem would doom chances of forming a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

"If Israel carries out this plan ... the chances for any political solution based on the two-state solution become grimmer and grimmer," Etkes said.

The continued building is in violation of a U.S.-backed peace "road map" that calls for a freeze to such construction. Israel says the Palestinians have failed to live up to their obligations under the plan to disarm militants.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israeli construction in the West Bank was aimed at accommodating the "natural growth" of populations within the settlements.

A U.S.-backed peace "road map" charting reciprocal Israeli-Palestinians steps toward creation of a Palestinian state calls for a freeze of "all settlement activity including natural growth of settlements".

Olmert told reporters in Jerusalem there had been no violation of "the basic Israeli commitment that there will not be any building outside of the existing settlement limits".

MAJOR ENCLAVES

Israel has built 121 settlements on land captured in the 1967 Middle East. Settlers have built another 102 outposts, without government authorization, where 2,000 people live.

The World Court ruled that the settlements are illegal -- a ruling Israel disputes -- and Palestinians fear their expansion will deny them enough land to build a viable state.

Most construction is taking place in major settlement enclaves which Israel says it would keep under any peace deal, including Maaleh Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etsion, Peace Now said.