JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel’s governing rightwing Likud party was expected on Thursday to approve a motion to renew settlement construction in the occupied West Bank when a limited moratorium expires in September.

Some 2,500 members of the party’s central committee were to vote on a motion supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to renew construction on September 26, Likud MP Ofir Akonis told public radio.

Netanyahu had reluctantly imposed a 10-month ban on new building starts last November following months of US demands for gestures to help relaunch peace talks with the Palestinians suspended during the 2008-2009 Gaza war.

The Palestinians have always dismissed the move, however, because it did not include projects already under way, public buildings or occupied and annexed east Jerusalem, which they claim as the capital of their future state.

And Israel’s Peace Now group which monitors settlements said last week that so many projects were approved before the “freeze” began that it has has done little to slow the expansion of settlements.

Netanyahu has always said the moratorium was temporary, and Akonis said the motion to resume construction was so popular the prime minister did not need to attend the meeting.

“There is such a consensus on the need to renew construction in the settlements in Judaea and Samaria that the prime minister can pursue government activities during the meeting,” he said, using the West Bank’s biblical name.

“After September 26, the freeze is finished,” Danny Danon, another member of the pro-settler Likud, told public radio.

Netanyahu was also expected to avoid the meeting so as not to be seen publicly applauding a move likely to anger Washington, which has repeatedly criticised settlements as an obstacle to the peace process.

The prime minister is due to meet with US President Barack Obama in Washington on July 6 after cancelling a previously scheduled meeting in the wake of Israel’s deadly May 31 capture of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

The Palestinians grudgingly agreed to relaunch indirect US-brokered peace talks with Israel in May but have said they will not move to direct negotiations without a complete settlement freeze including in east Jerusalem.

Israel annexed the eastern part of the city after occupying it in the 1967 Six Day War in a move not recognised internationally and today considers all of Jerusalem its “eternal, undivided” capital.

The presence of nearly a half million Israelis in more than 120 settlements scattered across the West Bank and east Jerusalem has long been seen as a major threat to the establishment of an independent, viable Palestinian state.