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JERUSALEM - Palestinian leaders have accused Israel of trying to wreck the peace process launched last week by US President George W Bush after Israel said it planned new homes on land it seized near Jerusalem 40 years ago.
"This is an attempt to obstruct negotiations," the chief Palestinian negotiator, Ahmed Qurei, said after Israel's Housing Ministry said the government had invited construction firms to bid for contracts to build dozens of houses and shops.
The Palestinian leadership wrote to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, architect of last week's peace summit at Annapolis, Maryland, urging her to intervene to block the move.
It is the first public dispute between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel since Bush, who has invested personal capital in seeking peace before he steps down in a year, watched over handshakes between the two sides near Washington last week.
In an apparently unrelated development, Israeli officials told local media Bush would make his first presidential visit to the region around January 9. The White House had no comment.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman said the plan to build did not breach an undertaking at Annapolis to honour commitments under the 2003 'road map'. These include halting Jewish settlement on Arab land. But Israel does not view the site it calls Har Homa - and Palestinians call Abu Ghneim - as part of the West Bank territory Palestinians want for a state.
"This is a flagrant violation of all that happened at Annapolis," said Qurei, a former prime minister. "There will be no peace process if they continue with settlement activities."
Fellow negotiator Saeb Erekat said Abbas' administration wrote to Rice and other capitals noting that both sides agreed at Annapolis to US adjudication in disputes over the road map.
"This is a real test for all of us," he said. "We urge you to have the Israeli government revoke this order because it will be a severe blow to all those who took part in Annapolis."
A tender posted on the Israel Land Authority's website and dated December 2, invited firms to bid to build 307 "residential and/or commercial and/or hotels and/or leisure" units. A Housing Ministry spokeswoman said it was part of a 20-year-old plan.
The site lies between Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Bethlehem to the south. After the 1967 war that also saw it occupy the West Bank and Gaza, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and some nearby West Bank lands, enclosing them in a municipal boundary that also runs around what was Jewish West Jerusalem.
That annexation is not recognised internationally but Israel has housed thousands of Jews in such developments, lying between East Jerusalem and Palestinian towns in the West Bank. Abbas said at Annapolis he wanted East Jerusalem as capital of a state he hopes can be established by a treaty before Bush steps down.
Asked whether the new housing plan was a rebuff to Abbas' plans, Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, said: "Not at all."
"Israel makes a clear distinction between the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which falls under Israeli sovereignty," he said.
But Nimer Hammad, an aide to Abbas, said: "It will undermine the credibility of the United States as a sponsor of the peace process and the effort of the Annapolis conference."
There was no immediate response from US officials.
Bush hailed the success of the Annapolis meeting in seeing Abbas and Olmert agree to launch full peace negotiations after a seven-year stalemate. But few observers believe a peace deal can be clinched by the end-2008 target date embraced at the meeting.
Negotiators plan to meet in Jerusalem on December 12. Core issues in dispute are the status of millions of Palestinian refugees, security, the borders of the new state and the fate of Jerusalem, which Israel wants, undivided, as its capital.
Addressing a sceptical domestic audience, Olmert, who is unpopular with voters, has this week played down the importance of any deadline for ending talks and has stressed that Israel wants Abbas to make good on his road map commitments to curbing violence by Palestinian militants before it signs any treaty.
- REUTERS
