JERUSALEM, July 24: Israel was set to expand a settlement in the occupied Jordan Valley, a senior official said on Thursday, in defiance of Palestinian and international calls to freeze such activity.

“We are currently in the process of constructing 20 housing units in the Jordan Valley settlement of Maskiot,” a senior defence ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Local authorities in the Jordan Valley on Wednesday published a tender for the construction, he said, but the move still requires the final go-ahead from Defence Minister Ehud Barak.

“The construction still requires the authorisation of the defence minister... there is no reason for him not to give the authorisation.” The international community has repeatedly urged Israel to freeze all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, saying it hampers efforts to achieve peace with the Palestinians.

In New York, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokeswoman Michele Montas told a press briefing the UN chief was “deeply concerned” about Israel’s plan to expand Maskiot.

She recalled that Ban had repeatedly stressed that “settlement construction or expansion is contrary to international law and Israel’s commitments under the roadmap and the Annapolis process.” “The Secretary General urges Israel to heed the call of the (Middle East peace) Quartet to freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth, and to dismantle outposts erected since March 2001,” she added.

The new homes would join hundreds the Israeli government has approved in the West Bank, including annexed Arab east Jerusalem, since the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians at Annapolis last November.

But while those units are in large settlement blocs and parts of east Jerusalem that Israel wishes to keep under its control in any peace deal, the Jordan Valley does not fall under such a category.

“The government will abide by its commitment to have no outward expansion of settlements beyond their existing boundaries,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev said.

Some 470,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, 200,000 of them in east Jerusalem.—AFP