by Jean-Luc Renaudie
JERUSALEM, Aug 2 (AFP) - Israel gave a new push to its settlement programme in defiance of the internationally-backed roadmap peace plan by approving the construction of 600 new homes in the West Bank, officials said Monday.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz have both given the green light to the building work in Maale Adumim, the largest of the West Bank settlements, a defense ministry spokesman told AFP.
Maale Adumim, situated close to Jerusalem on the road to Jericho, is home to 28,000 Jewish residents.
The new units are expected to house some 2,000 Israelis which would represent a seven percent rise in the Jewish settlement's population.
Under the terms of the roadmap peace plan, Israel is obliged to freeze all settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories where around 245,000 Israelis live.
According to the Maariv newspaper, the housing ministry received instructions not to publish public tenders to avoid embarrassing the Americans who are one of the four sponsors of the roadmap.
US President George W. Bush said back in April that it was "unrealistic" to expect a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank as he endorsed Sharon's controversial disengagement plan.
Under the terms of plan, all Israeli settlers will have to leave the Gaza Strip and four small Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank next year.
However the plan also envisages the de-facto annexation of large settlements such as Maale Adumim.
The roadmap has made next to no progress since it was formally endorsed by both the Israelis and Palestinians in June 2003, amid mutual accusations that its terms have been violated.
Sharon has said he has no option but to embark on unilateral measures such as the Gaza pullout in the absence of any partner in the peace process on the Palestinian side, pointing to a recent collapse in law and order in the West Bank and Gaza as vindication of his policy.
His Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qorei was hosting his first cabinet meeting Monday since reversing a decision to quit over the security chaos.
A weekend of kidnappings, mass protests and arson attacks on Palestinian Authority offices has served to underline the task facing his government and prompted Qorei to warn the West Bank was on the verge of "unprecedented chaos".
In a further sign of the disarray, two suspected Palestinian collaborators were killed after a grenade attack in Gaza City's main prison, including one who was later executed by five masked gunmen in his hospital bed.
Mahmud al-Sharif was shot in the head by the gunmen who had burst onto his ward in the city's Al-Shifa hospital, while another of the six wounded prisoners, Mussa Auwda, died of his injuries.
The security chaos has presented veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with the biggest challenge to his authority since he returned from exile 10 years ago.
But in a brief address to supporters outside his West Bank headquarters Monday, a defiant Arafat pledged: "Inshallah (God willing), we will stand against all the conspiracies because we only bend for God."
In further violence, three Palestinian militants were also shot dead by Israeli soldiers while planning an overnight attack on a Jewish settlement in the northern Gaza Strip.
Ambulance teams gathered the bodies on the edge of the Eli Sinai settlements.
An Israeli military source said that troops opened fire on the three gunmen who had entered an unauthorised area and were approaching a security fence which surrounds the three Israeli settlements in northern Gaza.
"They were obviously planning some kind of attack and had entered around 100 meters (yards) inside the buffer zone," the source added.
A joint statement issued by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the armed wing of Islamic Jihad said three of their fighters had been "martyred".
The shootings came after a 53-year-old Palestinian woman, Mula Abu Sahlul, was shot dead by Israeli gunfire while in her home in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis.
The latest deaths brought the overall toll since the September 2000 start of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, to 4,210 including 3,213 Palestinians and 926 Israelis.