The White House reacted with dismay to word that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will authorize the building of new settler homes on occupied land before considering a freeze on such construction.
President Barack Obama has been pressuring Netanyahu's right-leaning government to halt settlement building, a major obstacle in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, so it can announce a resumption of the negotiations.
The Obama administration has been holding out the prospect of a three-way meeting in New York of Obama, Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later this month if there is sufficient progress toward resuming peace efforts.
"We regret the reports of Israel's plans to approve additional settlement construction," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, calling the activity inconsistent with Israel's commitment under a long-standing peace "road map."
"As the president has said before, the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop. We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate," Gibbs said in a statement.
It was another sign that the most serious rift in U.S.-Israeli relations in a decade will be hard to bridge as Obama tries to meet his pledge to make Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking a higher priority than his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Netanyahu also is also under pressure from many lawmakers in his rightist Likud party to resist Obama's push for a suspension of settlement building in the occupied West Bank, land Palestinians want as part of a future state.
A Netanyahu aide, who declined to be identified by name, said that after the several hundred housing units are authorized, the Israeli leader would be prepared to consider a moratorium on building, lasting a few months.
Israel is already building some 2,500 housing units at West Bank settlements that are in various stages of construction.
Palestinians Demand Total Freeze
Palestinian officials say they will resume talks only if Israel stops all building within Jewish enclaves in the West Bank, in keeping with a 2003 U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan that also called on the Palestinians to rein in attacks on Israelis.
Gibbs said the administration appreciated what it sees as Israel's "stated intent to place limits on settlement activity and will continue to discuss this with the Israelis as these limitations are defined."
Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Abbas, said that peace talks, suspended since December, could not resume without an Israeli pledge to a total freeze of settlement building.
Obama has taken the public stance that Israel must halt all settlement activity under the "road map." Palestinians say settlements, built on land Israel occupied in a 1967 war, could deny them a viable state.
The United States is seeking to bridge the Israeli and Palestinian positions and persuade Arab states to take steps towards normalizing relations with the Jewish state.
Obama's special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, this week met Netanyahu aides in New York to work on an agreement to resume talks in time for an announcement at the U.N. General Assembly toward the end of September.
On Wednesday, Israel and the Palestinians held their highest-level talks since Netanyahu's government was inaugurated in March when Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom met Palestinian Economy Minister Bassem Khoury in Jerusalem to discuss economic issues.
