New Israeli housing planned; U.N. mulls Palestine

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Israel revealed plans for 1,100 new housing units beyond its pre-1967 war border as the U.N. Security Council was to mull a Palestinian U.N. membership request.

The Palestinian National Authority condemned the Israeli housing plan, with a spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas accusing Israel of placing new obstacles in the way of the peace process.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Obama administration was "deeply disappointed" by Israel's announcement, which came a day before Wednesday's Security Council meeting to refer the Palestinian Authority request for state recognition, a key step toward full U.N. membership, to a committee for review.

On Friday, after Abbas submitted his recognition request, the United States, United Nations, Russia and European Union -- known collectively as the Quartet -- urged the authority and Israel to return to direct negotiations within a month, with no preconditions.

The statement did not mention a settlement freeze, but called on both sides "to refrain from provocative actions" and cited the sides' obligations under a 2003 U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan that included a call for an end of all Israeli settlement building.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the authority's settlement-freeze demand was "a pretext" to avoid direct negotiations.

He told The Jerusalem Post that during Israel's last 10-month moratorium, the Palestinians waited nine months before sitting down to negotiate -- only to walk out a month later when the moratorium on settlement construction expired.

He called on the authority to begin immediate, direct talks with no preconditions.

An Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman told The New York Times the timing of Tuesday's announcement about the new settlements was determined by a lengthy approval process, not by a political agenda.

Construction is not likely to begin before 2013, she said.

The construction is proposed for the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, along with East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel later annexed the settlement to Jerusalem, a step not recognized internationally because it goes beyond the so-called Green Line for Israel's border set out in the 1949 armistice agreements between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.