Israel has provoked criticism from the international community with a plan to build more houses in the territory claimed by Palestine.

France, Denmark, Spain, and Sweden on Tuesday summoned Israel's ambassador to express their deep concern over the announcement of 3000 new settlement units in East Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank including an area known as E-1, which could "completely" cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. The British Foreign Office criticized the plan and called Israel to rescind it.

The same day, the US State Department warned that settlement construction in the “particularly sensitive” E1 threatens any remaining chance of securing a two-state solution. White House press secretary Jay Carney urged Israeli leaders to rethink this unilateral action which discourages the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The Jewish settlement in the West Bank settlement of Ariel (Photo: GETTY)

Despite the international protest, the Israeli government on Monday decided to revive a plan to construct 1,600 new settler homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. According to Israeli interior ministry spokeswoman Efrat Orbach, in the next two weeks the interior ministry's district committee for Jerusalem will convene to discuss the objections to the program. She added that the committee will then have to decide which of the objections it accepts, and make changes accordingly.