Tel Aviv, December 23, SPA — Israel has plans to build an additional 740 apartments in disputed east Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2008, a Cabinet minister said Sunday, enraging Palestinians who say such construction undermines nascent peace talks.
The Construction Ministry’s proposed budget for 2008 includes 500 apartments for the Har Homa neighborhood in east Jerusalem. Plans to build more than 300 apartments in that same neighborhood, announced earlier this month, upset the first round of negotiations Israel and the Palestinians conducted in seven years, the Associated Press reported.
An additional 240 apartments are planned for construction in Maaleh Adumim just outside Jerusalem, one of Israel’s biggest West Bank settlements, according to the ministry’s
budget.