The United States said today it was disappointed by Israel's decision to allow a freeze on new settlement building to expire.
Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would give the US time to try and persuade Israel to extend the 10-month partial moratorium on building in West Bank settlements.
"We want to give the Americans four to five days, a week, to see if they can get Mr. Netanyahu to seriously reconsider the moratorium," Mr Shaath said in an interview in Paris hours after the freeze ended.
Direct talks that started in Washington earlier this month will be on hold until it is clear what Israel will do, Mr Shaath said.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon today expressed regret that Israel didn't extend the moratorium on settlement construction.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government isn't planning to renew the freeze. Israeli building crews began work today at settlements including Ariel, Oranit, Tekoa, Neve Daniel and Adam, according to Naftali Bennett, director-general of the Yesha Council, which represents the 300,000 settlers in the West Bank.
Allowing the 10-month limited building freeze in West Bank settlements to expire, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu defied Mr Obama's call for an extension but avoided antagonising pro-settler parties in Israel's governing coalition.
In Washington, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said US policy on settlement construction had not changed. "We remain in close touch with both parties and will be meeting with them again in the coming days," he said in a statement.
Settler groups pledged that construction would begin on some 2,000 homes next week, after the end of the Jewish religious festival of Sukkoth when many Israelis are on vacation and businesses operate on a limited holiday schedule.
One settler leader, Shaul Goldstein, said there could be problems in getting housing projects off the ground.
"We have a serious problem of a lack of confidence in the decisions of the government and therefore a large section of the private builders has not yet started to build," he told Army Radio."They want to see what the future holds and that everything will be fine. We have encouraged them to start (building)."
Palestinians say settlements which are illegal under international law, will make it impossible for them to create a viable independent state and the issue is one of the core problems standing in the way of any peace agreement.
More than 430,000 Jews live in over 100 settlements established across the West Bank and East Jerusalem on land that Israel captured from Jordan in a 1967 Middle East war.
Some 2.5 million Palestinians live in the same areas.
Agencies