JERUSALEM, 19 November 2005 — Israel has invited bids for the building of 13 homes in the biggest Jewish settlement in the West Bank, despite an obligation to freeze such construction under a US-backed road map peace plan with the Palestinians.

A posting yesterday on the website of Israel’s Lands Authority offered 13 plots for the construction of single-family homes in Maaleh Adumim, home to more than 28,000 Jews.

The Sharon government vowed earlier this year to link Maale Adumim to Jerusalem, but shelved the plan after protests by the United States, which sees settlement expansion as contravening the road map to a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Left-wing Israeli watchdog group Peace Now accused Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government of poor faith in diplomacy. Israeli government officials had no immediate comment.

In violence yesterday, Israeli troops shot and lightly wounded a Palestinian youngster near the West Bank town of Ramallah after mistaking his toy gun for a real weapon, in the second such incident this month, the army said.

An army spokeswoman said troops were called to an area near Silwad, north of Ramallah, after an Israeli woman reported “hearing shots fired” in the area.

“From a distance of about 200 meters away, troops identified a Palestinian shooting, so they opened fire toward him,” she said, without giving the youngster’s age. “From an initial investigation, it appears he was shooting a plastic toy gun,” the spokeswoman said.

In another development, Israeli police detained nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu yesterday as he tried to pass through a West Bank checkpoint in an apparent violation of restrictions imposed after his release from prison in 2004. Border policemen carried out a spot check on a bus passing through Al-Ram checkpoint toward Jerusalem, and noticed Vanunu among the passengers, police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said. “He has been taken to our International Crimes Unit for questioning,” Rosenfeld said. Vanunu, who all-but blew away Israel’s nuclear secrecy by discussing his work at the Dimona reactor with a British newspaper in 1986, flashed a V-for-victory sign to reporters as police bundled him into a transport van.

Sharon Weighs Breakaway Party

Top aides to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are pressing him to quit his restive Likud Party and form a more centrist movement ahead of early Israeli elections next year, political sources said yesterday. They said Sharon would decide over the weekend whether to jump ship or to hold on to the helm of Likud, a right-wing party he helped launch but which has been ideologically adrift over Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza after 38 years of occupation.

“In my opinion he already decided but he doesn’t want to say. I have suspicions that he is planning to leave Likud,” one Sharon confidant said.

Surveys show that a Sharon-led Likud would beat Labour, as Peretz is untested in handling a Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000. At the head of a new party, Sharon can expect to run neck-and-neck with Peretz.