Settler tenders show Israel not serious

The Palestinians said Israel's new plans for settlement construction announced Sunday showed it was "not serious" in efforts to negotiate peace and urged Washington to intervene as sponsor of the talks. The tenders for over 1,000 homes in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem were proof that Israel "was not serious in the negotiations," Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Shtayeh said in a statement. He charged that 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 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." The Palestinian negotiator called for Washington, sponsoring the talks, to take "a firm and clear position to rein in this Israeli attack on the West Bank and especially Jerusalem." Israel's housing ministry said earlier said it would be publishing tenders for 793 units in east Jerusalem and 394 elsewhere in the West Bank. The US State Department said last week that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would resume talks in Jerusalem on Wednesday on ending their decades-old 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 over the issue of settlement building.