Settlement push on eve of peace talks An Israeli activist argues with a border policewoman outside a cornerstone laying ceremony for a new Jewish neighbourhood in east Jerusalem. Israel has published bids for the construction of more than 1000 housing units in contested areas of East Jerusalem and several large West Bank settlements, intensifying the already charged atmosphere three days before the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and hours before Israel was to announce the names of Palestinian prisoners to be released this week. While the planning and building of settlements have continued in the months preceding the talks, causing constant friction, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new governing coalition had so far refrained from issuing construction bids since it was formed in March. The publishing of bids is the final bureaucratic stage before new construction can begin. Housing Minister Uri Ariel announced the bids while Mr Netanyahu was recovering in a hospital after overnight surgery for a hernia. "No country in the world accepts dictates from other countries about where it is allowed to build and where not," he said in response to the international condemnation of Israel's continuing efforts to build up the settlements. The settlement push appeared intended to appease the right-wing members of the Israeli government before the expected release this week of 26 Palestinian prisoners who have served 20 years or more in prison for deadly attacks against Israelis. A ministerial committee is expected to complete the list of those to be released in Jerusalem on Tuesday. The decision to release 104 prisoners over the coming months is deeply unpopular in Israel. Mr Netanyahu has explained it as a gesture that was necessary to persuade the Palestinian leadership to agree to resume long-stalled negotiations and that was preferable to acceding to other Palestinian demands such as a settlement freeze. But it appears the talks will be taking place amid a storm of mutual recrimination. On Sunday, Mohammad Shtayyeh, a senior Palestinian negotiator, said: "It is clear that the Israeli government is deliberately attempting to sabotage US and international efforts to resume negotiations." Israel, he continued, "continues to use peace negotiations as a smokescreen for more settlement construction." Although the settlement construction bids were all for housing in areas Israel intends to keep under any agreement with the Palestinians, the timing of the move prompted criticism in Israel, even from within the government. Finance Minister Yair Lapid, of the centrist Yesh Atid party, described it as "a double mistake." "Solutions for the housing problem should be carried out in areas where there is demand," he wrote, adding that using resources meant for middle-class housing "to needlessly challenge the Americans and to poke sticks in the wheels of peace talks is not right and not helpful to the process." Amram Mitzna, a legislator from the party of Tzipi Livni, the Israeli government's chief negotiator with the Palestinians, described the settlement announcement as "delusional" and said the government was taking contradictory actions. "It takes a step, a very difficult step, a very sensitive step, such as the release of murderers," he told Israel Radio. On the other hand, it tries to balance it, as it were, by building in the territories.