[IMRA: Prime Minister Sharon's team can "have its cake and eat it to" - by
having the item that they are doing something in the West Bank published in
the most read edition (Friday) of Israel's biggest newspaper and then
denying it in time to kill the story before it made the papers in the U.S.]

Israeli Govt Agency Denies It Planning Settlement Boom
By Jeffrey Heller Fri Feb 25, 2005 09:53 AM ET
www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7742185&src=rss/worldNews

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli government agency said on Friday it never
received final approval for a plan, reported by Israel's biggest newspaper,
for a housing construction drive in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The report in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily that 6,391 homes for settlers were
slated to be built this year, a sharp increase over 2004, drew a call from
the Palestinians for U.S. pressure on Israel to drop any such plan in the
interests of peace.

"This is a draft of a plan that was submitted in 2003," said Adam Avidan, a
spokesman for the Israel Lands Authority, the government agency cited by the
newspaper as having formulated the proposal. "It was never approved."

Avidan said he did not know how many new homes would be built this year in
existing settlements in the West Bank.
Responding to the newspaper report, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz's office
said in a statement he had approved building permits for "a limited number
of housing units" in settlement blocs. The statement gave no figures.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said any construction would violate
a U.S.-backed peace "road map" that calls on Israel to cease all "settlement
activity" on territory it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and which
Palestinians want for a state of their own.

The election of Mahmoud Abbas last month as Palestinian president and a
ceasefire he and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared at a Feb. 8
summit in Egypt have raised hopes of reviving the road map after four years
of bloodshed.

SETTLEMENT BLOCS

Palestinian leaders have also warmed to an Israeli evacuation of all 21
Jewish settlements from Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank due to start
on July 20. But they note Sharon pledged to keep big West Bank settlement
blocs forever.

"As for the major clusters, don't expect us to stop construction there. In
any future agreement, Israel will retain them," a government official said,
citing a need to accommodate the "natural growth" of their populations.

About 225,000 Israelis live in 120 settlements in the West Bank. The
international community views settlements as illegal. Israel disputes this.

In a new development in the Gaza pullout plan, security officials said Mofaz
intends to speed up the pace of evacuation this summer in a bid to avoid
lengthy confrontations with settlers who refuse to leave.

Mofaz now aims to complete the withdrawal in four weeks instead of seven,
the officials said.

A shorter time period, they said, could also fit into Israel's plans to try
to sell settlement structures and assets, such as greenhouses, to
international investors or bodies rather than demolish them.

Israeli forces will bar Palestinians from evacuated settlements until the
last one is empty and leaving greenhouses untended for long would decrease
their value and make it harder for Palestinian farmers to raise a crop, the
officials said.

In fresh violence, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian who was spotted
trying to infiltrate into Israel from Gaza. A military source said he was
unarmed. Palestinian security sources said he had tried to enter Israel
illegally to work.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza)