Israel to invite bids to build 1000 settler homes

Israel said Sunday it would issue tenders for 1,000 new settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and Palestinians called this proof Israel is "not serious" about peace talks. "Tenders will be published" later in the day for 793 units to be built in annexed east Jerusalem and 394 elsewhere in the West Bank, the housing ministry said in a statement, three days ahead of a new round of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Housing Minister Uri Ariel, of the far-right Jewish Home party, dismissed international criticism of settlement building on occupied Palestinian land as illegal and an obstacle to peace. "No country in the world accepts diktats from other countries on where it is allowed to build or not," he said in the statement. "We shall continue to market apartments and build throughout the country." The housing ministry said plots would be offered in Har Homa and Gilo, both on east Jerusalem's southern outskirts and in Pisgat Zeev, on the city's northern edge. Tenders would also be issued for settler homes to be built in Ariel, in the northern West Bank, in Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, and in Efrata and Beitar Ilit, around Bethlehem, it said. The US State Department said last week that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would resume talks in Jerusalem on Wednesday on ending their long-standing conflict. They resumed direct negotiations in Washington last month ending a three-year hiatus after painstaking US mediation. The last talks in 2010 broke down on the issue of settlement building. Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Shtayeh slammed the latest move, saying it was proof Israel was "not serious in the negotiations." Israel "aims through this condensed settlement activity to destroy the basis of the solution called for by the international community, which aims to establish a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders," Shtayeh said. He said the new tenders were "conditions and new facts on the ground" that Israel was setting in order "to determine the negotiations in whichever way suits it best." Shtayeh also called for Washington to take "a firm and clear position to rein in this Israeli attack on the West Bank and especially Jerusalem." Israel stood its ground with a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that since the new construction was designated for blocs, it will change "nothing." "The construction decided upon today in Jerusalem and in the settlement blocs are in areas that will remain part of Israel in any possible future peace agreement," Mark Regev said in a statement. "This is no way changes the final map of peace. It changes nothing." Also on Sunday, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met US mediator Martin Indyk in Ramallah for talks that centred on the resumption of the peace talks, official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported. It reported that during the meeting Indyk reaffirmed US President Barack Obama's commitment to back efforts to push ahead with the peace talks within the time-frame agreed upon. Netanyahu, meanwhile, sent a letter during the weekend to US Secretary of State John Kerry to complain about "incitement" from Abbas, according to remarks provided to AFP by an official from his office. The prime minister was referring to remarks by Abbas published by Egyptian newspapers in July. Abbas reportedly said that "Palestinians do not want to see any Israeli -- whether a civilian or a soldier -- on their lands in any final solution." Referring to the report, Netanyahu wrote Kerry: "Incitement and peace cannot coexist." "Rather than educate the next generation of Palestinians to live in peace with Israel, this hate education poisons them against Israel and lays the ground for continued violence, terror and conflict," he wrote. Israel's chief negotiator in the talks, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, was to meet Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon and Science and Technology Minister Yaakov Peri, a former head of the Shin Bet security agency, later on Sunday to approve a first batch of 26 prisoners to be freed ahead of Wednesday's talks. A total of 104 long-term Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners, in jail since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords, are to be freed in four stages, depending on progress in the talks.