Israel has authorised construction of 300 new homes at a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, Israeli Army Radio said on Tuesday, defying U.S. calls for a halt to settlement growth.
The station said 60 of the 300 homes slated for the Talmon settlement in the West Bank have already been built and that Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who oversees West Bank operations, had approved plans to construct another 240 units there.
The Defence Ministry had no immediate comment, saying it was checking the report.
A Reuters reporter saw a handful of homes under construction inside central Talmon, already the site of several hundred dwellings. On the outskirts, bulldozers had levelled an area where billboards advertised "a new stage of two-family houses".
Half a million Jews live in settlement blocs and smaller outposts built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war, and which are home to some 2.5 million Palestinians.
The World Court has ruled all the settlements illegal. U.S. President has pressed Israel to halt settlement activity as part of a bid to revive peace talks under which the Palestinians would gain independence alongside the Jewish state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to declare a settlement freeze, which could spark a backlash within his rightist coalition government, many of whose members see the West Bank as a Jewish biblical birthright.
Successive Israeli governments have vowed to keep settlement blocs under any peace deal.
"The settlement expansion is a continuation of the Israeli policy that destroys the efforts being exerted, especially by President Obama," said Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Israel says the Palestinians, divided between Abbas's U.S.-backed administration in the West Bank and the rival Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip, have not done enough to stop violence against the Jewish state.
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