JERUSALEM, June 7: Israel shrugged off on Thursday US criticism of its plans to erect 851 more settler homes in the occupied West Bank, projects that appeared aimed at placating settlers angry with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.    

“They need to condemn. We need to build,” Construction and Housing Minister Ariel Attias told Army Radio.

Facing down settlers and their supporters in parliament and in his right-wing Likud party, Netanyahu defeated on Wednesday an attempt by ultranationalist lawmakers to legalise all settler homes on private Palestinian land in the West Bank.

The anti-settlement Peace Now group says some 9,000 of the 65,000 housing units Israel has built for the 311,000 settlers in the territory fall into that category. Some 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank.

The bill was proposed after the Supreme Court ordered the removal by July 1 of five apartment buildings erected on disputed tracts in the settlement of Beit El.

Netanyahu said he had no choice but to abide by the ruling, which put him at odds with an increasingly rebellious core of staunchly pro-settler activists and lawmakers in his party.—Reuters