RAMALLAH, West Bank, 8 December 2007 — Israeli officials yesterday confirmed that the US has requested that Israel provide clarifications on its plan to build 307 new housing units in Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem. The new housing project would expand the settlement in an area Palestinians want as the capital of a future state.

The Palestinians call the area Jabal Abu Ghneim, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appealed to the US to block the project. The future of Jerusalem is one of the core issues facing Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in peace talks that are supposed to resume this month, following the conference on Mideast peace, held in Annapolis last month.

The Israeli officials told the daily Haaretz that the US diplomats who met with senior government officials in Jerusalem this week said that Washington hoped to gain insight on what the construction project would mean for the peace process.

According to the officials, the Americans said they wanted to know “what this thing is exactly and where it’s coming from.” The officials told Haaretz that they had explained to the Americans that the construction of the 307 housing units was approved long before the Annapolis summit.

“We told them this was nothing new, and that anyway this was a construction project inside Jerusalem, which is Israel’s capital, and that we regard this as perfectly legitimate.” An Israeli government spokesman has said the plan does not contravene Israel’s commitment under a US-sponsored “road map” for peace with the Palestinians.

According to the US-backed road map, Israel is supposed to cease all settlement construction. But Israel does not consider construction in East Jerusalem to be settlement activity.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday slammed Israel’s plan to build more new homes in Har Homa. “This new tender for 300 new homes in eastern Jerusalem, so soon after the Annapolis Middle East peace conference, I think is not helpful,” Ban said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also criticized Israel yesterday for planning to build new homes on occupied land in the Jerusalem area. “We are in a time when the goal is to build maximum confidence with the parties and this doesn’t help to build confidence,” she said in rare public censure of Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East.

At a news conference at NATO in Brussels after she had met Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Rice added: “There should not be anything which might prejudge final-status negotiations. It’s even more important now that we are on the eve of the beginning of the negotiations. I made that position clear.”

The Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) passed a law that would make it illegal to make any concessions on Jerusalem. Although the law still requires the approval of Abbas, it is intended to embarrass the Palestinian leader and ties his hands on the eve of the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on core issues, including the future status of Jerusalem. Hamas lawmakers said Abbas would have no other option but to endorse the law.

The PLC session was boycotted by many members of the rival Fatah faction in protest of Hamas’ violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last June.

However, many Fatah legislators have made it known that they too support the law, which states that Jerusalem is a Palestinian, Arab and Islamic city and that it is totally forbidden to give up or conduct negotiations about any part of the city.