JERUSALEM, Dec 4: Israel said on Tuesday it has invited bids to build more than 300 new housing units in annexed east Jerusalem, the first settlement expansion since the revival of peace talks with the Palestinians.

The Palestinians slammed the move as an attempt to undermine the renewed peace drive which was officially launched after a seven-year hiatus at an international peace conference in the United States last week.

“The Israel Land Administration has published a tender for the construction of 307 housing units in Har Homa,” an official in the housing ministry said, referring to a neighbourhood in east Jerusalem.

At the Annapolis conference last week, Israel and the Palestinians pledged to implement the 2003 roadmap plan, the first phase of which calls on Israel to freeze all settlement activity and for Palestinians to improve security.

The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday deployed dozens of security forces in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem in a bid to curb lawlessness and violence, Palestinian security officials said.

Israel does not consider construction in east Jerusalem — which it captured in the 1967 Six-Day war — as settlement growth because it annexed the Arab part of the Holy City shortly after the conflict.

“The neighbourhood is under the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem municipality and does not require any authorisation of the defence ministry,” which issues construction permits for settlements in the West Bank, the official said.

But the annexation of east Jerusalem has not been recognised by the international community, and Palestinians want to make it the capital of their future state.

Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erakat lambasted the move, which comes a week before Israeli and Palestinian teams are to hold their first talks on a permanent peace deal which the sides aim to clinch by the end of 2008.

“This blatant Israeli violation of the roadmap will destroy any trust among all the nations that have participated in the Annapolis conference,” Erakat said in a statement.

“If Israel does not backtrack and cancel this settlement decision it will undermine the results of the Annapolis conference before they have even begun to be implemented,” he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last month vowed to freeze construction of new West Bank settlements as a gesture of goodwill toward Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas ahead of the Annapolis meeting.

But government spokesman Mark Regev said that construction at Har Homa does not constitute a violation of Israel’s roadmap commitments.

The head of Israel’s Peace Now settlement watchdog Yariv Oppenheimer said the new tender raised questions about Israel’s intentions in the peace talks.

“Har Homa is a controversial settlement whose fate should be discussed within the framework of peace talks. The decision to construct now is a provocation that raises questions about Israel’s readiness to negotiate a peace deal,” Oppenheimer said.

In a report released earlier on Tuesday, Peace Now said that Israel has demolished only three percent of unauthorised construction inside Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank over the past 10 years.

—AFP