Israel is set to inaugurate a new police headquarters for the occupied West Bank in an area outside Jerusalem that is at the heart of a bitter land dispute. “The building, which can house hundreds of police, will be inaugurated Monday,” a spokesman for the public security ministry said. The police station is located in the 12-km E1 corridor between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Continued settlement activity in the territory is seen as one of the major stumbling blocks in slow-moving peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel insists that building the police station is not linked to the settlement issue as it is a security installation. Palestinian officials warn that Israeli construction in E1 would completely block the narrow corridor of land running east of Jerusalem that is crucial for any future connection between the southern and northern West Bank. The Palestinians want to make occupied and annexed east Jerusalem the capital of their promised state and vigorously oppose expansion plans for Maale Adumim. Three years ago, the government froze a project to build 3,500 new housing units on the outskirts of the settlement. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has repeatedly insisted construction will continue in the major settlement blocs in the West Bank including east Jerusalem. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is likely to discuss the thorny settlement issue when she travels to Israel over the weekend on her second visit to the region in just three weeks. Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush has invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House in early May for talks to advance the Middle East peace talks, a US official said Thursday. The move was part of a continuing effort “to work with the Palestinians and the Israelis as well as other countries in the region in realizing a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel,” said spokesman for the national security council Gordon Johndroe. Abbas has been invited around May 1, although the “details are still being worked out,” Johndroe told reporters as Bush flew to Ohio to give an address on the US “war on terror.” Officials say Israel's defense minister has promised the Palestinian prime minister new gestures aimed at improving conditions in the West Bank. __
