A 10-minute drive from where negotiators sat down to resume long-stalled Middle East peace talks, Israeli bulldozers were busy on Monday reshaping land that Palestinians want for their future state.
Settler homes are popping up across East Jerusalem and major roads are being built to burgeoning Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israel has just approved plans for 1,500 new homes on the territory it seized in the 1967 Middle East war, in a settlement called Ramat Shlomo.
The non-stop building on the land that is at the heart of the conflict raises serious doubts about whether the latest round of U.S.-brokered talks can result in a deal to create an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, a rights groups says.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the driving force behind the resumption of talks following a three-year hiatus, has said it is a major problem but there is time for a final push.
Israel has rejected criticism of its construction plans, saying the new homes would be erected in settlements within blocs it intends to keep in any future peace deal with the Palestinians.
The settler numbers are imposing. In 2010, when the Palestinians quit negotiations over settlement building, some 311,110 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank, now, according to Israel’s Army Radio, this has surged to 367,000.
Adding in East Jerusalem, then the number of Israelis living beyond the 1967 lines rises to nearly 600,000. Few, if any, would willingly quit their homes as part of a peace deal.
The sheer quantity of planned new homes has stunned outsiders and prompted condemnation from Nabil Abu Rdaineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Negotiators from both sides have met three times since the talks resumed in Washington last July.
