ISRAEL’S interior minister gave final authorisation to build 1,600 apartments in disputed east Jerusalem and will approve 2,700 more apartments in days, officials said yesterday, detailing a plan that could complicate diplomatic efforts to dissuade Palestinians from declaring statehood at the United Nations.

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will probably win narrow approval from his coalition government for a US proposal to extend a freeze on West Bank settlement building, Israeli political sources said yesterday.

Work has begun on up to 600 new homes in West Bank settlements since Israel lifted its curb on such construction, a senior settler official said.

Israel said today it will press forward with construction of new housing for Jews in east Jerusalem, drawing Palestinian accusations that the plans could undermine newly relaunched peace talks.

THE official reaction in Ireland to the Israeli offensive in Gaza was “insensitive and unhelpful”, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

The question of Jewish settlements remains a difficult one. Obama will have a hard time changing minds, writes Juno McEnroe in Jerusalem

ISRAELI public support for the war on Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon has been so overwhelming it has become hard to tell the doves from the hawks in the Jewish state’s generally fractious society.

ACTING Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday that Israel plans to withdraw from some of the territory it holds on the West Bank.

ISRAEL’S Cabinet yesterday adopted a report on the state’s complicity in setting up 105 illegal West Bank settlement outposts and decided to dismantle 24 of them.

In a sign of the fierce opposition that could accompany Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a Jewish settler leader has made a public call for his followers to break the law when fighting against the evacuation.

Israel announced plans today to construct hundreds of new housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a violation of the road map peace plan.

ANGRY settlers got into bloody fistfights yesterday with soldiers and police trying to dismantle the West Bank settlement outpost of Mitzpeh Yitzhar, the first inhabited outpost being removed under a new US- backed peace plan.

PRIME MINISTER Ariel Sharon vowed yesterday, after an Israeli-Palestinian security meeting, to continue attacks on militants suspected of planning suicide bombings, a senior Israeli political source said.

A number of Israeli rabbis today denounced Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to knock down several tiny illegal West Bank outposts as part of the US-backed road map to peace.

ISRAELI troops began dismantling an uninhabited West Bank settlement outpost yesterday, taking a first step toward meeting part of its obligations under a US-backed peace plan.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said today that he will not use force to disarm the militant groups under any circumstances, despite two shootings over the weekend that killed five Israeli soldiers.

A Palestinian alleged to be responsible for the death of at 100 Israelis in suicide was killed when an Israeli tank shelled a house in the West Bank city of Nablus.