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.