The US has objected to Israeli plans to expand the main Jewish settlements in the West Bank and extend construction of its controversial ”anti-terror fence” to its deepest point inside the occupied territories.
Palestinian officials said both plans reinforced concerns that Sharon intended to use the removal of settlers from the Gaza strip as a pretext for entrenching Jewish towns in the West Bank and possibly annexing them to Israel.
Israel this week began construction on sections of the fence around Ariel settlement, extending the massive steel and concrete barrier about 20km into the occupied territories at a point where the West Bank is 52km wide.
On Wednesday hundreds of Palestinian and foreign protesters temporarily brought work to a halt by stoning military bulldozers.
The US state department spokesperson, Richard Boucher, said Washington was concerned about the political consequences of building the barrier so far into Palestinian territory.
”It’s a problem to the extent that it prejudges final borders, that it confiscates Palestinian property, or that it imposes further hardship on the Palestinian people,” he said.
Last year George Bush described the route of the fence as a ”problem” and said it should follow the 1967 border, the ”green line”, or remain close to it. Sharon had assured him that construction around Ariel would be deferred.
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Sharon ordered work to go ahead as part of a deal with Binyamin Netanyahu to gain his support for the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from Gaza.
An Israeli official said fencing Ariel did not breach any understanding between Israel and the US because initially the fence would only be on three sides of the main settlement and some of its satellites, and not joined to the main barrier close to the green line.
But the defence ministry plans to close the gap early next year. The US has said it is opposed to that. It has also asked Israel to clarify new plans to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
On Tuesday the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported that the defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, had ordered faster building of the block of settlements in Etzion.
Etzion’s council wants to build about 5 300 houses and is seeking permission for a further 7 500 by expanding the settlement boundaries.
Ma’ariv said Mofaz had told settler leaders that building permits would be issued soon for the other two main settlement blocks in the West Bank, Ma’ale Adumim, near Jerusalem, and Ariel.
The three blocks, which house most of the 420 000 Jews living in the West Bank, cut deep into Palestinian territory.
Israel had assured the US that it would not expand the settlements, but the two governments interpret the undertaking differently.
The US says there can be no further building of any kind because it would create additional ”facts on the ground”.
Sharon has said that the settlements are entitled to build to meet the natural growth of expanding families.
Israeli officials go further and say that more houses can be built within the municipal boundaries drawn when each settlement was founded. These often enclose an area several times bigger than the existing towns.
An Israeli official said on Wednesday that the plans were still being studied and no final decisions had been made.
A Palestinian spokesperson, Michael Tarazi, said: ”We knew from the beginning that the plan was to build the wall so as to maximise the amount of Palestinians on one side and the amount of land on the other.
”The construction of the wall around Ariel fits absolutely with that, as does expanding the settlements.”
Sharon’s hand has been strengthened by the attorney general’s decision on Tuesday to stop investigating him for corruption without laying charges. That lifted a doubt about the survival of the government, but divided Israelis.
An anti-corruption watchdog lodged a petition on Wednesday asking the high court to reinstate the investigation on the grounds that the attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, had wrongly concluded that there needed to be a higher standard of proof before charging a prime minister with a crime.
Opinion polls on Wednesday showed that Israelis were almost evenly divided on whether Sharon should have been tried for corruption. – Guardian Unlimited Â