by Liat Collins.

In the November 23 edition of The Jerusalem Report, New York-based writer and feminist icon Anne Roiphe moans, "I am concerned that the Israel I love appears to have abandoned hope of reconciliation, and is now behaving like Britannia when she was the ugly, undisputed colonial mistress of the known world. I worry that the decision to continue settlement building in the West Bank creates more facts on the ground. It blasts the prospect of an honorable peace into a distant galaxy."

And, indeed, Roiphe and I seem to be living on different planets. While we both desire peace, we obviously have different opinions on what blew the possibility of a decent diplomatic solution to the Middle East so off course. From the outset of the Oslo Accords, I was skeptical. I found the very phrase "Jericho and Gaza First" ominous. It seemed obvious to me that Jerusalem, if not second, was not far down the list, perhaps just after the Etzion Bloc and the Golan Heights. At what point we were meant to get the actual "peace" part of the "process" was not so clear.

Roiphe admits that the view from her New York progressive world is different from the one that many Israelis have. About as different as the view from her window and what I see from my tenement in Jerusalem's Katamonim area, I expect.

"Of course 'honorable' is a preoccupation of the safe, the luxury of those out of range of rockets and of enemy armies, regular and irregular," writes Roiphe. "Knowing all this, I still say more is at stake here than military control of a restive people or fulfillment of biblical edicts. What matters here is that Israel survives with its moral center intact and its democracy vibrant and its people able to look in the mirror without shame."

Well, when I look in the mirror, I see - like most of my middle-aged friends, I suspect - a face with a few more worry lines and gray hairs than used to be there. Most are attributable to normal aging. I don't know how many I can blame on motherhood, but giving birth at the height of the "second intifada" maybe left its mark on more than just my psyche.

SOME PEOPLE I know might have aged this week for a different reason. Some of my best friends, as they say, are settlers. Suddenly a lot more of them, it seems.

The Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee's approval of a plan to build some 900 units in the capital's southeastern Gilo neighborhood has caused ripples way beyond the confines of City Hall in Jerusalem's Safra Square. You might have thought Iran had dropped a bomb.

Leaders in the US, the UK, Russia and the European Union immediately condemned the plan as an obstacle to returning to the negotiating table. I can't help but wonder, however, if Israel is forced to freeze building in the capital as a prerequisite to resuming negotiations with the Palestinians, what price are we expected to pay for yet another promise of peace?

An environmentalist, I have definite reservations about massive construction in the area, but my major concerns are about green zones, not the Green Line, which is particularly blurred at this point.

While it is convenient to blame the lack of peace on "settlers" - a term frequently spat out in the foreign media as if it barely referred to human beings - most of the settlers I'm proud to call friends defy the stereotype. They are not religious fanatics. Some aren't even Orthodox. And nearly all them moved because of the lack of affordable housing in Jerusalem rather than a desire to live over the Green Line and infuriate the Palestinians and the rest of the world.

The latest "settlers" of my acquaintance are the families who moved to Gilo positive they were remaining in Jerusalem - to which they pay municipal taxes. They still send their children to schools within walking distance of my own apartment - in a part of the capital being more hotly contested by realtors than the Arab world, although I suppose I could wake up one morning, look in the mir

Israel has given the go ahead for the construction of 900 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem, rebuffing a reported US request that it block construction at the Gilo settlement, officials have said.

Israeli officials had earlier on Tuesday declined to comment on a report in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that said George Mitchell , the US envoy to the Middle East, had asked an aide to Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to halt the process.

Gilo sits on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed to its Jerusalem municipality.

Under international law, all Israeli settlements built on occupied land are illegal.

A spokesman for Nir Barkat, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, issued a statement saying the mayor "strongly objects to the American demand to halt construction in Jerusalem".

But Mark Regev, the Israeli government spokesman, declined comment on the report, which also said Netanyahu's negotiator had rejected Mitchell's request at a meeting in London on Monday.

Washington 'dismayed'

Relations between the US and Israel have been soured by Washington's repeated calls for a freeze on settlement expansion, a move Israel has so far refused.

The US said it was "dismayed" over the approval to expand the Gilo settlement and sharply criticised the ongoing evictions and demolition of Palestinian homes.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said in a statement: "At a time when we're working to relaunch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed."

Regev repeated Israel's refusal to include areas it annexed to Jerusalem as part of any accommodation of calls by Barack Obama, the US president, for "restraint" in West Bank settlement growth.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu, in order to get the peace process back on track, is willing to adopt the policy of the greatest possible restraint concerning growth in the West Bank - but this applies to the West Bank," Regev said.

"Jerusalem is Israel's capital and will remain as such," he said, stating an Israeli position not recognised by world powers and contested by Palestinians who want to establish a state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland in Jerusalem said: "What we are seeing is Israel's strategy of trying to differentiate between East Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied West Bank.

"We have seen the government repeatedly claim that Jerusalem is its so-called united capital and the government said just today that whereas it planned to exercise what it called maximum restraint in the West Bank, it claimed that Jerusalem was a different case."

The plan for the housing units was cleared at a local level in April and passed by a committee of the interior ministry on Tuesday, Rowland said.

"It [Gilo] is one of these Jewish settlements across the green line in occupied Palestinian land which is attached to Jerusalem basically as a way of Israel trying to strengthen its grip on the capital, and literally create 900 more facts on the ground," she said.

'Two-state solution'

Israel rejects the international description of Gilo as a settlement and says it is a neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

Tel Aviv's refusal to halt settlement construction in the Occupied Territories has stalled any hopes of resuming peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh, reporting from the West Bank city of Ramallah, said the announcement would be "very disappointing" for the Palestinians, who have set a complete freeze on settlement expansion as a precondition for resuming peace talks.

"This announcement in many ways validates the Palestinian argument that you have an Israel government that is not committed to the two-state solution; that does not even recognise that East Jerusalem is occupied land," Odeh said.

The Palestinians swiftly condemned the approval of the housing units, saying Israel is "not interested in peace".

Nabil

Hamas announced yesterday that it would freeze its rocket attacks on southern Israel, after Israeli war aircraft bombed the Gaza Strip.

The Islamist group, which has run the blockaded coastal enclave since 2007, said it had come to an agreement with other militant groups that in future they would fire the crude home-made missiles only in response to Israeli strikes.

The agreement was designed to “keep together the internal front and the supreme national interest of the Palestinian people”, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing said.

Israel launched a huge offensive against Gaza almost a year ago in which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, according to Palestinian medical groups. The main aim of the operation was to stamp out years of rocket fire. Although the attacks declined significantly, they were not halted.

The announcement may be a response to reports that Israel is close to an agreement with Hamas for the release of an Israeli soldier captured by the militants more than three years ago. Gilad Shalit is expected to be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian militants being held in Israeli prisons.

Israeli sources said that Saturday’s air raid, in which at least five Palestinians were wounded, was aimed at a weapons factory and smuggling tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank, senior Fatah officials have been calling for peaceful protests outside Jewish settlements.

On Saturday, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, said that the demonstrations should be modelled on the weekly protests against the construction of a huge security barrier by Israel inside the West Bank.

“The people must struggle to remove the occupation,” Mr Abbas told the BBC. However, he ruled out any repeat of the armed struggle that the Palestinians waged from 2000 and which has now largely petered out.

The string of suicide attacks and shooting rampages inside Israel, as well as attacks on Jewish settlers, led to Israel re-occupying autonomous Palestinian areas of the West Bank, and the construction of the barrier.

Mr Abbas spoke of his disappointment at US and European efforts to force Israel to halt the construction of settlements in the West Bank, which is the main Palestinian precondition for resuming peace negotiations with Israel’s right-wing government.

Mr Abbas recently voiced his anger at the lack of progress and said he would not stand again for president in elections next year.

In Egypt, Israel’s ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, told his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak today that all settlement growth would cease when peace talks began.

“The minute we shall start to negotiate there won’t be new settlements, there won’t be confiscation of land,” Mr Peres said.