GAZA CITY - The Palestinian Authority on Monday slammed Israel's determination to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank, with one official saying it torpedoed efforts to revive the Middle East peace process.
Israel will continue to build up the three largest Jewish settlements -- Maale Adumin, Gush Etzion and Ariel -- which would "never be transferred to the Palestinian Authority," said an official in the prime minister's office.
The source was speaking after it emerged Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz has approved the construction of more than 3,500 new homes in Maale Adumim, the most populous Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei said developing Maale Adumim would threaten the whole of Jerusalem, the Arab eastern sector of which has been occupied by Israel since 1967.
"Jerusalem is in real danger. If 3,500 homes are added to Maale Adumim and it is surrounded by the apartheid wall as planned, it will threaten the fate of all Jerusalem," he told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Gaza City.
The apartheid wall is what the Palestinians call Israel's security barrier snaking across the West Bank that they see as an attempt to pre-empt the border of their future state.
Qorei warned the "entire world of the danger these kind of unilateral Israeli measures have on the peace process".
"The decision of the Israeli government and its defence minister to build more than 3,500 homes in Maale Adumin sabotages all efforts seeking to get the peace process back on track," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.
"The Israeli government wants to determine Jerusalem's fate by presenting the settlements and wall as a fait accompli," he said.
"We ask the quartet and American President George Bush: what happened to the two-state vision and how can we have peace while settlements and the wall continue to be built?" Erakat added.
The so-called quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States drafted the roadmap peace plan, which had sought to freeze settlement activity and create an independent Palestinian state by 2005.
03/21/2005 14:53 GMT