Israel issues tender for construction

JERUSALEM, Feb 17 (AP/AFP): Israel issued a tender for the construction of nearly 1,000 additional settler homes in the occupied West Bank, an anti-settlement watchdog said Monday.

Peace Now says the development of 974 new housing units would allow the population of the Efrat settlement to expand by 40% and further block the development of the nearby Palestinian city of Bethlehem. Hagit Ofran, who leads the group's settlement monitoring, said construction can begin after the contracting process and issuing of permits, which could take another year at least.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for their future state and view the settlements as a major obstacle to peace, a position with wide international support.

President Donald Trump lent unprecedented support to the settlements during his previous term. Israel has also steadily expanded settlements during Democratic administrations, which were more critical but rarely took any action to curb them.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements across the West Bank, ranging from hilltop outposts to fully-developed communities that resemble small towns and suburbs, with apartment blocks, malls and parks.

Over 500,000 settlers live in the occupied West Bank, which is home to some 3 million Palestinians. The settlers have Israeli citizenship, while Palestinians live under military rule with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.

Arab summit on Trump's

Gaza plan deferred

A planned Saudi meeting of Arab leaders in response to US President Donald Trump's plan to take control of Gaza has been postponed by a day and expanded, Arab diplomats said on Monday.

"The mini Arab summit in Riyadh has been postponed from Thursday to Friday,

February 21," a Saudi source told AFP. An Arab diplomatic source confirmed the new date.

Three Arab states had been expected to attend the summit, but the Saudi source said the expanded meeting will "include the leaders of the six Gulf

Cooperation Council countries along with Egypt and Jordan to discuss Arab alternatives to Trump's plans in the Gaza Strip".

The member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council are the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait.

The Saudi source said that "an influential Gulf country expressed its dissatisfaction at being excluded from the Riyadh summit, which prompted the organisers to include all the Gulf countries", without specifying which ncountry was involved.

Trump had proposed taking over the war-batted Gaza Strip and moving its more than two million residents to Jordan or Egypt -- a plan experts say would violate international law.

Arab countries have unanimously rejected the idea or any prospect of displacing Palestinians from their lands.