""Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the new construction was approved in areas that Israel expects to retain in any future peace deal.

"There is no way it changes the final map of peace," he said. "It changes nothing.""

Israel shows absolutely no sign of any intent to remove itself from occupation of 62% of what should ultimately be the larger part of the state of Palestine.

The settlement of 2% of that land may be almost irrelevant. The fencing off of 62% and the treatment of those 56,000 Palestinians still remaining in Area C in an obvious attempt to bully them into leaving is the real issue.

Having already compressed 1.7 million Palestinians into the tiny Gaza Strip, Israel is now compressing another 2.1 million into just 38% of what should be their homeland.

Far from the innocent victim of Muslim aggression it claims to be, Israel is actually squeezing the Palestinians into an utterly unsustainable land area which puts them at the mercy of Israel, since they can, at the drop of a hat, be starved into submission.

That is what passes for peaceful intentions in the Israeli government.

Don T.