Israel ministers agree to halt settlement tenders

Israel's prime minister and two top cabinet ministers agreed on Tuesday to stop issuing tenders for West Bank settlement building until early 2010 in a bid to advance the peace process, officials said, AFP reported.

While construction is currently under way in some settlements in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory, no new tenders have been issued for months, officials say.

"We believe there is no reason to strain relations with the United States and as a gesture we decided to temporarily suspend the issuing of new tenders for construction in the West Bank," an official told AFP.

He said this covered occupied and annexed east Jerusalem, whose fate is one of the thorniest issues in the stalled Middle East peace talks.

The official, who asked not to be named, said this demonstrated "Israel's willingness to move forward with the peace process."

Officials stressed that the agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Housing Minister Ariel Atias did not amount to a formal government decision.

The Israeli anti-settlement Peace Now group pointed out that there are currently 1,000 housing units under construction in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem.

"This means that on the ground there is no settlement freeze. A real freeze is the end of all construction, even those yet to be completed," it said in a statement.

The group confirmed that Israel has not issued any tenders for West Bank housing construction in months, but said government-sponsored construction only represents 40 percent of all construction in the occupied West Bank.

"Thus, even if there is a complete freeze of construction bids on behalf of the government, at least 60 percent of all construction in the settlements continues as before," Peace Now said.

US President Barack Obama's administration has been pressing for a freeze of settlement construction as a vital step towards reviving peace talks that were relaunched in November 2007 but produced no tangible results before they again came to a halt just over one year later.