As the international community was preparing for the upcoming U.S.-sponsored peace meeting between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Israel was busy doing something else: expanding its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

In a report covering the period from May to October, Israeli settler watchdog Peace Now said construction is underway in 88 West Bank settlements; “ranging from single houses to large projects of tens and hundreds of housing units.”

The report also said that a new 600-unit ultra-Orthodox Jewish housing community was being added to Givat Zeev settlement, northwest of Jerusalem. It also found new construction in 34 of 105 "outpost" settlements in the occupied West Bank, charging that settlers have started building trailer home "caravans" on site to bypass a ban on transporting them without permits.

"In 34 outposts there has been construction or trailers (caravans) were added… At least 35 new trailers have been delivered to the various outposts, and 14 new rooms have been added to existing trailers," Peace Now said, according to AFP.

It added: "…10 permanent buildings are going up in outposts and 8 lots were flattened for construction or the addition of trailers, 6 roads and trails were built inside the outposts."

Noting that most of the construction is in large settlement blocs located on the west side of the separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank, the report condemned the construction of the controversial E-1 road, which Israel claims is aimed at facilitating Palestinian movement, but Palestinians charge is part of a larger project to split the West Bank in half.

All Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law.

Palestinians fear that the expansion of Jewish settlements would eat up their lands and prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state, which they want to have in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East War.

Peace Now also dismissed Israeli claims that the expansion of settlements is a "natural growth" of their populations in the West Bank, home to 2.4 million Palestinians.

Citing government statistics published in June, the groups said that the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank has reached 267,500, an annual growth of 5.8 percent, versus 1.8 percent growth within Israel during the same period.

"This means that the growth of settlements is much more than the 'natural growth' and includes massive migration of settlers to the West Bank,” it said.

The Peace Now report comes weeks after the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said Israel has denied Palestinians in the West Bank the right to movement through a labyrinth of checkpoints and barriers set up to protect Jewish settlements.

It also comes as the Israelis and Palestinians are locked in discussions aimed at reaching a joint document ahead of the U.S.-sponsored international peace meeting due later this year in Annapolis, Maryland.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he is ready to reach a deal that would give the Palestinians their own state according to the so-called roadmap, a blueprint for peace with the Palestinians that has made no progress since its introduction in 2003.

But the continued settlement expansion defies the internationally-backed roadmap peace plan, which calls on Israel to freeze settlement activity and to remove all settlements built after March 21.

Peace activists and analysts now say the chances of success of the Annapolis conference are limited by the Israeli settlement activity.

The construction of settlements "puts the chances of success at the Annapolis meeting in grave danger," Peace Now's Director-General Yariv Oppenheimer told AFP.

Oppenheimer also said that the Israeli military had stopped monitoring construction at the illegal outposts, stressing that construction has accelerated even as Israel and the Palestinians work to prepare for the Annapolis conference.

"There is no connection between what is happening in political negotiations and what is happening on the ground… As far as settlers are concerned, there are no political negotiations, there is no Annapolis conference, there is no roadmap - there is only more and more construction work in settlements."

If this policy continues "we will soon have a settler state instead of a Palestinian state,” Oppenheimer warned.

On the other hand, Jewish settlers, many of whom embrace the idea of a "Greater Israel" that includes the West Bank and Gaza, say that their removal would amount to a forced expulsion.

Earlier this week, about 2,000 ultra-Orthodox demonstrators, many of them West Bank settlers, rallied in central Jerusalem against the ongoing talks with the Palestinians, in the first such action since the process was launched.

Right-wing activists have also tacked up posters of Israeli President Shimon Peres in the black-and-white keffiyeh Arab headdress favored by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, AFP reported.

Similar demonstrations depicting former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin were run off in a campaign of right-wing incitement against a peace agreement that preceded his assassination by a Jewish extremist in 1995.

Israeli rabbis have also threatened U.S. President George W. Bush of “divine punishment” if he did not scrap the meeting, saying Hurricane Katrina and California fires were “God's punishment” for America, The Palestine Chronicle reported.

"Without reasonable territorial contiguity and without access and connection to East Jerusalem, there can be no viable Palestinian state and we will not be able to reach an agreement to end the conflict," concluded Peace Now.

PHOTO CAPTION

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

Source: Aljazeera.com