JERUSALEM — Israel on Friday published bids for the construction of 450 new housing units in West Bank settlements, a move denounced by the Palestinians and by Israeli critics who described it as a political gesture by the rightist government ahead of elections in March.
The bids also came against a background of heightened tensions with the Obama administration over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s impending address to Congress, which was arranged without coordination with the White House. The United States has repeatedly condemned Israeli settlement plans.
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“There is a sense that they are holding a liquidation sale before the elections,” Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that opposes all settlement activity, told Israel Radio, referring to the government. “The housing minister and the prime minister are trying to do all they can to create facts on the ground before the government is replaced.”
In addition, Israeli anti-settlement groups said Friday that a local Jerusalem planning committee had advanced plans for 93 new housing units in Gilo, which lies over the 1967 line on the southern edge of Jerusalem.
