Monday, Dec 23rd
Last update09:22:09 AM GMT
International Glance
When the freeze was announced, it came with the assertion that some 3,000 units were grandfathered in and would proceed during the moratorium.
David Ha’Ivri, spokesman for the Shomron Regional Council in the northern West Bank, said the leader of the council, Gershon Mesika, knew a freeze was coming and so approved more than 1,600 units in 2009, nearly 10 times the number that had been approved the previous year for his area.
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Israeli bulldozers destroyed six buildings, including at least three homes, in contested east Jerusalem on Tuesday, resuming the demolition of Palestinian property after a halt aimed at encouraging peace talks.
Jerusalem house demolitions are a volatile issue because of conflicting Israeli and Palestinian claims to the city's eastern sector. Israel sees it as part of its capital city, while Palestinians want it for their own future capital.
An Israeli military inquiry into the naval raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla says commandos were under-prepared and mistakes were made at a senior level.
The report says the operation suffered from flawed intelligence-gathering and inadequate planning.
But it also praised the commandos involved and found the use of force had been the only way to stop the flotilla. Eight Turks and one Turkish-American died in the naval raid in international waters, which provoked a major outcry.
Israel's foreign minister says a peace deal with the Palestinians should include handing areas where Israel's Arabs live over to Palestinian control. Avigdor Lieberman said a peace accord should be based on "population exchanges, not land for peace."
The Palestinians claim the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem for a state, but they have indicated readiness to swap some land in the West Bank for territory in Israel.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that the United States must make its position on Israel's nuclear strategy clear before talks on Tehran's atomic programme could resume. Sanctions imposed by "arrogant" Western powers would not slow Iran's nuclear progress, he said.
The United States, Europe and the United Nations have imposed sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear programme. Iran says its aim is to generate electricity and rejects Western suspicions it is seeking to build a nuclear bomb.
Euro MPs have approved a new deal to allow US anti-terror investigators to access Europeans' bank data. The vote followed tough negotiations with US authorities after a previous agreement was blocked by the European Parliament in February.
EU negotiators say the new deal gives EU officials authority to monitor the US investigators' actions.
As President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet, a report reveals 42 per cent of territory is controlled by settlers.
The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land.
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