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JERUSALEM, Dec. 26 — For the first time in 10 years, Israel said Tuesday it will build a new Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, prompting Palestinian anger and American concern.

The announcement, by the defense ministry and settler groups, seems to run counter to the prevailing effort by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has offered a series of gestures to the Palestinians after a meeting with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, several days ago.

The Palestinians want build an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and consider any Israeli building there an act of thievery. Israel says it accepts the idea of a Palestinian state but that its exact contours have to be negotiated.

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Pressed by Washington to help build up Mr. Abbas, Mr. Olmert last week promised to give him $100 million in Palestinian funds withheld by Israel, about 20 percent of the amount being held, but only for humanitarian purposes. Abbas aides, however, say the money will be used to strengthen his Fatah movement and pay salaries to Fatah loyalists. Mr. Olmert also promised to dismantle 27 of the 400 or so checkpoints in the West Bank, despite criticism by the Israeli commander of the region.

The new settlement will be called Maskiot, and approval was given for the construction of some 30 houses. The Israeli official insisted that all construction would be privately funded. They will be used by the 20 families of the hawkish Gaza settlement Shirat Hayam, which resisted evacuation and wanted to move as a group. To get them to leave Gaza peacefully, the army promised to keep them together.

The decision, the official said, “sort of went through and now it’s done and would be very hard to undo.”
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The road map calls for a freeze in settlement building along with a Palestinian push to dismantle terrorist groups. Israel says the dismantling should come first and no such action has taken place. But it has separately promised the Bush administration that it would only build within existing settlement structures to account for natural growth, “thickening” settlements but not expanding them physically.

Israel also promised that it would dismantle more than 20 illegal outposts set up since March 2001, but it has only dismantled one, and that under Israeli court order. Peace Now, a leftwing Israeli lobby that opposes the settlements and follows them closely, says that there have been more than 50 outposts established illegally since March 2001, and that there are more than 100 illegal outposts in the West Bank altogether, many of them, like the semi-settlement of Migron, built on private Palestinian land.

Much of the world considers all Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law; the United States, which used to call them illegal, now calls them “obstacles to peace” that prejudge final status negotiations. The outposts are illegal under Israeli law because the government has not authorized them.

An aide to Mr. Abbas said today’s announcement ran counter to the understandings Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas reached during their meeting on Saturday night.
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Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now, criticized the decision as contrary to the government’s stated aims and programs and noted that it has not been approved by parliament. “This is a veritable scandal, all the more so that this decision was taken by Amir Peretz,” himself a former activist with Peace Now, Mr. Oppenheimer said. What may begin with 30 houses could easily become more due to “thickening,” Peace Now said.
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