| | Israel is continuing to expand settlements
despite US pressure [Reuters] | | The US wants Israel and the Palestinians to hold "immediate talks" towards "a comprehensive peace and normalisation of relations", Washington's envoy to the Middle East, says. George Mitchell is aiming to lay the groundwork for those negotiations as he makes his fourth visit to the region since taking the post. Speaking to reporters at the start of a Palestinian donors' conference in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on Monday en route to the Middle East, Mitchell said such talks would also serve "the security interests of the United States". "The president has told me to exert all efforts to create the circumstance when the parties can begin immediate discussions," Mitchell said. On arriving in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Mitchell opened his meetings with Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, and was later to travel to Jerusalem to meet Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, and Shimon Peres, the president. He meets Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on Wednesday. 'Constructive' call On Monday, Barack Obama, the US president, had a 20-minute phone call with Netanyahu. The White House called Monday's talks "constructive" and said Obama "reiterated the principal elements of his Cairo speech, including his commitment to Israel's security". Netanyahu's office said that the "discussions were positive and covered a range of subjects". Netanyahu has said he is ready to hold talks with Abbas, focusing on economic, security and political issues. But Palestinians have rejected his proposed shift of focus away from territorial issues, whose complexity, Netanyahu has said, has frustrated US-backed attempts to reach a final peace deal. Abbas has said renewed negotiations would be pointless unless Netanyahu first endorsed Palestinian statehood and halted settlement expansion. Mitchell has long advocated the need for a settlement freeze as necessary for any tangible progress on peacemaking. Continuing settlement expansion | | Mitchell is to discuss Israel's illegal settlement construction during his visit [GALLO/GETTY]
| And Obama has been increasing the pressure on Netanyahu to stop all settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, without exception, and to endorse the idea of a Palestinian state. But Israel, apparently unfazed, has continued to build or expand settlements that are considered illegal internationally, arguing that so-called natural expansion cannot be stopped. Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh, reporting from the occupied West Bank, said Israel had in fact doubled settlement construction since recommitting to halting construction at the Annapolis conference 18 months ago. And there were plans for 75,000 new housing units, a third of them already approved, our correspondent said. Half a million Jews already live in settlement blocks in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Mitchell also reportedly plans to travel to Syria and Lebanon during the week, which would be his first visits there since being appointed the US envoy to the region. | 
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