Israel’s defence ministry on Monday said it had approved the construction of 50 new homes in the occupied Palestinian territory. The news came just 24 hours before Ehud Barak, the defence minister, was due to meet the US Middle East envoy for talks aimed at narrowing a rift between the countries over West Bank settlement expansion.
In spite of repeated calls by Barack Obama, the US president, for Israel to freeze the construction of Jewish communities in the West Bank, the defence ministry said it had given the go-ahead to build the units in Adam, a 25-year-old settlement of 3,500 Israelis north of Jerusalem.
