JERUSALEM - Israel's semi-governmental Jewish Agency has built dozens of unauthorised settlements in the West Bank, according to a report published in the Maariv newspaper on Tuesday.
Israeli authorities either helped finance or turned a blind eye to scores of unauthorised Jewish outposts in the West Bank, claimed the report commissioned by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The settlement division of the agency, responsible for immigration, "has systematically established illegal settlement points," said the report quoted by Maariv, five months after extracts first appeared in the Haaretz daily.
While Sharon is committed to tearing down the outposts under the terms of the Middle East roadmap peace plan, the report found that government ministries handed over millions of dollars to help finance their infrastructure.
Last week Sharon vowed that settlement activity would continue in the West Bank and Jerusalem despite his intentions to evacuate all Jewish communities in the occupied Gaza Strip by the end of this year.
The education ministry paid for nurseries and their teachers, the energy ministry connected outposts to the electricity grid while the government also shelled out for the construction of roads, the report said.
It also detailed how senior army officers "reached quiet understandings" to allow the outposts to be established and how soldiers still guard them.
The report's author, former justice ministry official Talia Sasson, wrote that vague definitions of the boundaries of authorised settlements were exploited by the architects of the outposts.
Under the terms of the roadmap, the government is obliged to dismantle all the outposts which have been erected in the West Bank since Sharon came to power in March 2001.
The Israeli anti-settlement organisation Peace Now says there are more than 100 outposts in the West Bank -- generally set up as makeshift settlements with caravans but are often later "legalised" by the authorities.
The international community considers all Jewish settlements in the occupied territories to be illegal.
03/08/2005 08:46 GMT