Israel promises more West Bank building in wake of savage murders

The shocking stabbings, carried out as the family slept, of rabbi Udi Fogel, his wife Ruth, their sons Yoav, 11 and Elad, 4, and three-month-old Hadas, set all Israel on edge and bolstered right-wing arguments that there is no one to talk peace with on the other side.

Meanwhile, the settlement expansion drive drew sharp Palestinian condemnation and made prospects for resumed diplomacy even more remote.

The settlement expansion entails 300 to 500 units in major West Bank settlement blocs Israel expects to hold in any peace agreement, the prime minister's office said. The new construction, approved by a team headed by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is a "response" to the killings on Friday night at the Itamar settlement near Nablus.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the decision was "wrong and unacceptable and it will only create problems." The Palestinians broke off peace negotiations with Israel in September after Mr Netanyahu refused to extend a moratorium on settlement construction.

The Israeli Peace Now organisation, which advocates a two state peace solution, also condemned the plans.

"We think it's against the Israeli interest and that Netanyahu admits with this step that his policy is shifted by terror and not by logic," said Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer.

However, at the funeral in Jerusalem, attended by an estimated ten thousand people, speaker after speaker called for more settlement building as a response to the attack, the deadliest against Israelis in years.

"We will continue to plant in the place of death," said parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin. "With their blood we will continue to build in every place and at every time."

Ruth Fogel's father, Yehuda Ben-Ishai said: "We must continue to build, to bring closer the redemption. Ruth and Udi want that. We are not parting from you, you will visit us as pure angels."

According to the beliefs of religious settlers, the Jewish return to the West Bank's biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria and building there brings closer the age of the Messiah.

Vice premier Moshe Yaalon used his eulogy to launch a scathing attack against the Palestinian Authority, alleging its education system incited against Israelis. "The murderers were educated to spill the blood of Jews just for being Jews. The Palestinians educate their children that the Jews are thieves and colonialists," he said.Former chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau said; "May god avenge their blood," but in the charged atmosphere following the killings there were fears settlers would seek to do that.

Palestinians in the West Bank were bracing for violent retaliation and Israeli security forces were placed on alert.

Senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi condemned the attack on the family but stressed her view that the root cause of such violence is the occupation and settlement expansion. "Clearly Netanyahu used this incident to press ahead with plans that were already in the making."

At a weekly Israeli cabinet meeting yesterday, the deputy chief of Israel's internal Shin Bet security service said 20 suspects were taken into custody in connection with the killings, most from a Palestinian village next to Itamar.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a mostly defunct Palestinian militant group, took responsibility for the killings, although it frequently takes credit for attacks it didn't commit in a bid to raise its profile.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak vowed that "the iron fist" of Israeli security forces would "soon land on the murderers."