Israel announced plans yesterday to build 50 homes in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, a week after US president George W. Bush called on prime minister Ariel Sharon not to expand settlements. The Israel Lands Administration, a government agency, published a notice inviting bids for the purchase of 50 plots for the construction of single-family homes in the settlement of Elkana, some five km (three miles) inside the West Bank.

The agency?s Web site shows it marketed 1,783 new housing units in the West Bank in 2004 and 1,225 in 2003. At a summit at Bush?s Texas ranch last Monday, the president urged Sharon to meet ??road map? obligations regarding settlements in the West Bank?, explaining at a news conference that meant ?no expansion of settlements?.

The US-backed peace plan calls for a halt to Israeli settlement activity, including ?natural growth?, Israel?s term for construction in existing settlements to meet the needs of expanding populations. Palestinians say such construction on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war is aimed at denying them a viable state envisaged by the ?road map?.

Bush raised the settlement issue after news that Israel planned to build 3,500 homes for settlers in a narrow corridor between the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, a project Palestinians said would cut them off from the city. Sharon, who plans to remove all Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip this summer, has pledged to hold on to major settlement blocs in the West Bank under any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

At the summit, Bush reiterated his position that it would be unrealistic to expect Israel to return all occupied land in a final peace accord and that ?existing major Israeli population centres? must be taken into account in any negotiations. Some 225,000 Israelis live in 120 settlements in the West Bank.