Israel plans large expansion of West Bank settlements

MAALEH ADUMIM, West Bank (AP) - Israeli trucks and bulldozers moved ahead Thursday with construction of a West Bank road on a hilly rock-strewn area where Israeli officials say they will build thousands of new housing units.

The project, intended to link the sprawling Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem four miles away, defies an internationally supported peace plan demanding a halt in Israeli settlement activity.

The project must go through a lengthy series of approvals by several government ministries before the first bricks can be laid.

The United States publicly condemned a smaller plan to expand Maaleh Adumim earlier this week, but Israeli officials said they will seek U.S. approval for this and other similar expansion projects.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops left the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, where they have been conducting an operation for six weeks to clear areas used to launch rocket attacks against Israeli towns and settlements. One military official said, however, the troops will redeploy around the town.

Hours later, Palestinian gunmen broke up a news conference, forcing three Palestinian Cabinet ministers to stop speaking and leave town.

The intrusion was the latest act of rebellion by militants against the Palestinian Authority, which they accuse of being ineffective against Israel and corrupt toward their own people.

The six masked gunmen were dressed in military fatigues and headbands of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

The growing insecurity in the Gaza Strip prompted the U.N. agency for the Palestinians to withdrew 19 foreign staffers, the agency said. It was the second withdrawal of foreign staff of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency from Gaza in less than three weeks.

"It is not an evacuation. It is a temporary relocation," William Lee, the agency's representative in Jordan, told The Associated Press.

The road construction at Maaleh Adumim is concentrated on the barren hills in the western extremity of the Judean desert.

As trucks and bulldozers worked under a searing summer sun, local Palestinians walked in the direction of A Tor and Issiwiya, two Arab neighborhoods on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

U.S. Mideast envoy Elliot Abrams will discuss the Maaleh Adumim plans during a Thursday meeting in Jerusalem with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The State Department said this week the United States opposes all settlement construction. A settlement freeze was outlined in the "road map" peace plan.

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia discussed the Maaleh Adumim scheme with Abrams on Thursday. The construction plan amounts to a "land grab" meant to deny Palestinians a state, Erekat said.

"This will kill the 'road map' and this will kill any attempts to have final status negotiations one day," Erekat said.

This week, the State Department denounced a report that Israel planned to build 600 units in Maaleh Adumim, saying it violated the peace plan. Israel said the building plan predated the "road map" and many of the units have been built already.

According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz have made construction of the new neighborhood a top priority.

The plan originally was approved by late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was killed in 1995, Maaleh Adumim's mayor, Benny Kashriel, told the paper.

Israel has long been concerned about the demographics of Jerusalem, a city which it claims as its capital. Jews have been leaving the city and the Arab growth rate is significantly higher than the Jewish birth rate.

Demographers forecast that in a few decades Jews will be in the minority.

Yuval Steinitz, chairman of parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said the expansion plan fits President Bush's acknowledgment that large settlement blocs will remain in Israeli control under a final peace deal.

"Contiguity between Maaleh Adumim and Jerusalem is necessary due to the realities. Maaleh Adumim is in the consensus," he said on Israel Radio.

Inside a busy mall in the center of Maale Adumim, local residents expressed strong support for building new housing units.

"I think it's great," said U.S. native Yitzhak Klein, 47, who moved to Maale Adumim in 1988. "It shows that Jewish settlement in Israel is expanding."

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli redeployment around Beit Hanoun came after more than six weeks of military presence in the town.

Israel raided Beit Hanoun last month after rockets killed two people in the Israeli town of Sderot. The deaths were the first by rocket fire since Israeli-Palestinian fighting erupted nearly four years ago.

Though hundreds of acres of Palestinian land were cleared and several houses demolished, the army operation in Beit Hanoun failed to stop the rocket barrage on Sderot. Several Palestinians were killed in clashes with the Israelis during the six-week mission.

Sharon says he is determined to stamp out the rocket fire, which could torpedo his plan to evacuate the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements by late 2005. Hard-liners opposing the pullout plan say a withdrawal will put more Israeli towns within rocket range.

As part of the withdrawal plan, Sharon sought and received U.S. backing for Israel's plan to hold onto large West Bank settlement blocs - such as Maaleh Adumim, home to 31,000 Israelis - under a final peace deal.