German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the Zionist entity on Friday to show "restraint" in the building of settlements.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the Zionist entity on Friday to show "restraint" in the building of settlements, after talks with the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

"We call on Israel to show restraint in the matter of settlement building," Merkel told a joint press conference with Abbas in Berlin.

Construction starts in Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land rose by 70 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2013, anti-settlement group Peace Now said Thursday.

Settlement building in the territories occupied by the Zionist entity during the 1967 Six Day War is considered illegal under international law, and the issue remains one of the most divisive in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Terming them "illegal", Abbas said the Zionist settlement construction in the occupied territories had "in fact, increased enormously".

"We ask the Israeli government to stop this activity," he told reporters through an interpreter.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said Thursday that the settlement building was "destroying the peace process."

Merkel reiterated Germany's support for the peace talks and a two-state solution, while Abbas thanked Germany for its economic support and its role in the peace process.

"We are serious in our efforts to conduct the negotiations," he said, adding an appeal directed at the Zionist government: "We should seize this historic chance."