Israel denies settlement report
Report on allowing 300 more homes to be built at Talmon settlement is refuted.
Israeli defiance
Half a million Jews live in settlement blocs and smaller outposts built in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
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The World Court has ruled all the settlements illegal and Barack Obama, the US president, has pressed Israel to halt all settlement activities as part of a bid to revive peace talks under which the Palestinians would gain independence alongside the Jewish state.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, 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,” Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said.