JERUSALEM — Israel rejected on Thursday a U.S. demand to freeze all construction in West Bank Jewish settlements to encourage peace talks, deepening a dispute with the Obama administration that has the hard-line Israeli government increasingly on edge.
The tensions flared on the same day Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was in Washington for a meeting with President Barack Obama. Abbas said the Palestinian demand for a settlement construction freeze would top his agenda.
Using unusually strong language, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that Obama wants a halt to all settlement construction, including “natural growth.” Israel uses that term for new housing and other construction that it says will accommodate the growth of families living in existing settlements.
Government spokesman Mark Regev responded Thursday by saying some construction would go on, noting that Israel already has agreed not to build new settlements and to remove some tiny, unauthorized settler outposts.
Regev said the fate of the settlements would be determined in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
The U.S. and much of the world consider the settlements an obstacle to peace because they are built on captured land the Palestinians claim for a future state.
