The Zionist Entity announced on Thursday it would build 1,500 more settlement units in response to the formation of a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas.

The Zionist Entity announced on Thursday it would build 1,500 more settlement units in response to the formation of a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas.

Housing Minister Uri Ariel told 'Israel Radio' that tenders had been issued for constructing the housing units following the inauguration of what he termed a Palestinian "terrorist government".

He did not cite locations. But Zionist media said homes would be erected in seven settlements in the occupied West Bank, some of them in areas the Zionist entity annexed to Jerusalem after the 1967 Middle East war.

"When Israel is spat upon, it has to do something about it," Ariela, a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, said.

Asked who had insulted the entity, he replied: "Our neighbors, and to a certain extent, the world."

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose reconciliation deal with Hamas led to the government's formation on Monday, said: "The Palestinian leadership will respond to this new settlement activity in an unprecedented manner". He did not elaborate.

Most countries regard settlements that the entity of occupation has built in territory it captured in 1967 as illegal. Their fate is a key issue in talks on an eventual independent Palestinian state - the latest round of which collapsed in April.

Ariel accused the United States of breaking an understanding with the entity that it would not talk with the new government.

However, Zionist Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, in an indirect rebuke of Netanyahu, called the settlement announcement - the first issuing of tenders since the peace talks collapsed - "another diplomatic mistake".

Livni, head of a centrist party in the Netanyahu government and its chief peace negotiator, told 'Israel Radio' it would now be harder "to enlist the world against Hamas".

The Zionist entity froze U.S.-brokered peace talks with Abbas when the unity deal was announced on April 23 after numerous unsuccessful attempts at Palestinian reconciliation.

Some Zionist political analysts predicted the entity's campaign against the foreign aid-dependent Palestinian government would now shift to lobbying allies in the U.S. Congress to withhold funding, which typically runs at $500 million a year.