Samuel Farid gazes at the yellow cranes and tractors churning up the West Bank to add more than 700 new homes to the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.

Mr Farid, a builder, believes that more housing units will follow. “I won’t be out of a job anytime soon – more families will come, more building will happen.”

Construction within the West Bank’s Jewish settlements should be at a standstill, according to most of the leading players gathered at Annapolis. Israel itself quietly halted new building permits for settlements this year – a shift acknowledged publicly last week by Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister.

In the larger settlement blocs that Israel believes it will retain in a final two-state solution, construction forges ahead. “The loophole is that building has continued on projects that have already been approved,” said Binyamin Kashriel, mayor of Ma’ale Adumim, the second-largest settlement in the West Bank. “The construction freeze is because of American pressure. Our Government knows that peace is not going to happen now. The governments, on all sides, aren’t poised to make peace,” he added.

Mr Olmert has tried to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, by releasing more than 400 Palestinian prisoners, removing half a dozen West Bank checkpoints and transferring 25 armoured vehicles to Mr Abbas’s security forces.

The construction freeze, though, has been viewed as Mr Olmert’s biggest step because of the symbolism of the settlements. “When someone builds a house or a street it is a statement that speaks louder than any speech. It is a statement that you are there to stay,” Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now, said.

In the settlement of Ariel, the only building project is a 32-unit apartment complex. Construction permits dried up long ago. Many families who moved there after the Israeli disengagement from Gaza live in caravans awaiting permanent housing.

Eilat Cohen-Zada, a mother of seven, said: “This Annapolis is just a bubble . . . It will burst and we will build our new community here.”

Times Recommends

• Green activists 'are keeping Africa poor'
• 'Delayed justice' fear for OJ Simpson
• Sex and the sari