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Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, warned Israel on Friday night that its plan to build 300 houses on land captured in the 1967 war risked undermining fresh attempts to forge peace with the Palestinians.Delivering what for the Bush administration is rare criticism of Israel over its settlements policy, Ms Rice said she had told Ehud Olmert’s government it must concentrate on building confidence with the Palestinians in the aftermath of the recent Annapolis conference.Speaking in Brussels, where she met Tzipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister , in a Nato foreign ministers meeting, Ms Rice said of the plan: “We are in a time when the goal is to build maximum confidence with the parties and this doesn’t help to build confidence.“There should not be anything which might prejudge final-status negotiations. It’s even more important now that we are on the eve of the beginning of the negotiations. I made that position clear.”Ms Rice’s comments come at the end of a week that has seen the US put more effort behind the move to bring peace between Israel and Palestine with the announcement that President George W. Bush will visit the region early next year. Israel on Friday confirmed that the US had asked it to explain the plan to build new homes in Har Homa, a Jewish settlement on occupied Palestinian land just south of Jerusalem. Before the Annapolis conference, the Israeli prime minister renewed a pledge to stop building new settlements in the occupied West Bank.However, he did not explicitly rule out what Israel calls the “natural growth” of existing settlements.In addition, settlements that like Har Homa lie in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem are considered by Israel to fall outside the Palestinian territories.The government said the tender was part of a seven-year-old plan and repeated the Israeli position that the site was excluded from the country’s commitments under Mr Bush’s “road map” plan of 2003.Palestinian leaders, however, have angrily denounced the construction plan, saying that it could jeopardise the current peace efforts.Disputes over settlements and Jerusalem are central to negotiations that Mr Bush hopes to conclude before he steps down.As in the days of Noah....
