Israel's limited 10-month freeze on settlement building is due to expire at the end of September and not on the 26th as previously understood, a military order shows.
According to military order 1653, which was issued immediately after the cabinet decision to approve the freeze on November 26, 2009, the moratorium on building in the West Bank is due to expire on September 30.
Until now, the widely accepted date for the end of the freeze has been September 26 -- exactly 10 months to the day after the cabinet decision was taken.
Officials in the Prime Minister's office had no immediate comment on the discrepancy between the two dates.
Direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians finally got off the ground on September 2 but could collapse if the freeze is not extended.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already indicated he would not extend the deadline, while the Palestinians have said they will walk out of the talks if settlement building resumes.
The issue of the moratorium was expected to be high on the agenda at a second round of talks between Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Sharm-e-Seikh, Egypt, on Tuesday.
Acording to Haaretz newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted during a Likud cabinet minister’s meeting that he was prepared to adopt a formula involving a partial freeze after the expiry on September 30.
He was quoted as saying: "At the end of the month, the freeze order is due to expire and we have to think about what is the wise thing to do.The potential exists to build 19,000 housing units. But I believe that in practice what will be built will be much less. We will not agree to be dictated to that nothing will be built, but between 0 and 1 there are other possibilities."
US Mideast envoy George Mitchell said Tuesday that the new round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations "is moving in the right direction," but he offered no evidence of progress on the hard issue of the West Bank construction.