Israel has announced a settlement expansion in the West Bank, dealing a blow to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as she held talks with Israel‘s premier on jumpstarting the dormant Middle East peace process.
The housing ministry invited bids for construction of 44 new housing units in the largest settlement in the occupied West Bank, Maale Adumim.
The news of the first tenders announced this year came as Rice and Olmert were meeting one-on-one for more than two hours at the premier‘s Jerusalem residence.
Palestinians and the Peace Now anti-settlement watchdog group warned the move jeopardized the international roadmap to Middle East peace -- a plan that Rice has been pushing on her regional tour.
‘Israel must make a choice between peace and settlements. It cannot have both,‘ Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP on Monday. ‘It‘s defying the international community and undermining Secretary of State Rice‘s peace efforts.‘
Announcing the bids for the settlement on the last day of Rice‘s trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories ‘is just spitting in the face of the American government,‘ Peace Now spokesman Yariv Oppenheimer told AFP.
‘This is the best way to say to the American government the truth -- that Israel is ignoring its commitments under the roadmap.‘
When asked to comment on the bids, Rice‘s spokesman Sean McCormack said only that there is ‘no change in our policy.‘
The United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations were the authors of the Mideast roadmap, under which Israel was to freeze settlements. The plan has largely lay dormant since its launch nearly four years ago.
Rice has said that the roadmap should be accelerated during her meetings with Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian leaders over the past three days following her arrival in the region on Saturday.
‘The roadmap needs to be fulfilled,‘ she said in an interview with Israeli television late Sunday.
In Rice‘s lightning visit to neighboring Jordan late Sunday, King Abdullah II told Washington‘s top diplomat that concrete progress needed to be made on the blueprint if the region was to be spared fresh bloodshed.
‘Without tangible, specific steps to activate the implementation of the roadmap in the near future, the cycle of violence will widen,‘ he said.
In Ramallah on Sunday, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas stressed the need for ‘active and continuous mobilization by the various regional and international parties... to achieve a durable and continuing peace... so that the region and the people enjoy peace and security.‘
He also refused ‘any temporary or transitional solutions, including a state with temporary borders, because we do not believe it to be a realistic choice that can be built upon.‘
Rice has made clear since the outset of her tour that she is bringing no US proposals to jumpstart the moribund peace process, saying: ‘I think no plan can be ‘Made in America.‘‘
But she stressed on Sunday that ‘the United States is absolutely committed to helping to find a solution‘ and to building on what she called ‘the momentum that is currently in Palestinian-Israeli relations.‘
Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem have suggested that Rice may not be pushing a firm peace plan because of the political weakness of both Olmert and Abbas.
Olmert, whose approval ratings have plunged to 14 percent, is facing the possibility that a new graft investigation may be opened against him while Abbas remains mired in a deadly power struggle with the Islamist Hamas movement that leads the Palestinian government.
Rice is also due to visit Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as she seeks to promote US President George W. Bush‘s new policy to quell surging sectarian violence in Iraq with the deployment of 21,500 more troops.
The plan revealed Wednesday has come under fire in many Arab capitals, even among staunch allies in the Gulf, with critics saying it provides a recipe for more sectarian violence in Iraq that could backfire elsewhere in the region.