Israel has frozen but will not abandon a controversial project to link its largest West Bank settlement to annexed east Jerusalem following sharp criticism from Washington, officials said Friday.
Israel's plans to build 3,500 new housing units near Maale Adumim defied the Middle East roadmap, which calls for a halt to all settlement activity on Palestinian land.
"The state of Israel has committed itself to freeze the building," Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as telling the English-language Jerusalem Post in the first official confirmation that Israel has suspended the plans.
"As such, we would be acting in an irresponsible manner if we would do otherwise," he added.
Earlier this year, Washington sharply rebuked Israel over plans to build the new units. US President George W. Bush has repeatedly urged Israel to halt settlement activity in keeping with the internationally drafted roadmap.
The Palestinians say any building on the so-called E-1 corridor between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem will wreck the viability of their promised future state by cutting off Palestinian areas of the West Bank from east Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, Israel insists it will link Maale Adumim to settlements in east Jerusalem, which has been occupied since the 1967 Middle East war and which the Palestinians want to make the capital of their future state.
Olmert told the Jerusalem Post there was no doubt that the planned housing units, to house an estimated 20,000 settlers, would eventually be built.
"It is absolutely clear that at a certain point in the future Israel will create continuity between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim and so there is not even an argument that in the end we will have to build the project," he said.
For the last 10 years, successive Israeli governments have intended to settle E1, but nothing was done until Israel last week announced it would build a new police headquarters in the area.
A source in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said it would take up to three years to overcome all the legal appeals to expand Maale Adumim but that the freeze did not affect the police station, which is already being built.
"Putting the (Maale Adumim) work to tender in any case requires further government approval," said the official.
Maale Adumim, already home to 28,000 Israelis, has become a matter of political one upmanship within the main ruling Likud party ahead of a leadership contest expected in November.
Former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who is trying to oust Sharon, accused him of "giving into international demands against building" between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem when he campaigned in the area on Wednesday.
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas this week urged Israel to dismantle all Jewish settlements built on all Palestinian territory, following its historic evacuation of all settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Sharon has argued the pullout from Gaza enables Israel to cement its control over its largest blocs in the biblically important West Bank.
Israeli officials say a road being built from the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority administrative headquarters of Ramallah, which bypasses Maale Adumim, will ensure Palestinian territorial continuity.
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