In a rare move, Daniel Kurtzer, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said Tuesday that the Israeli PM should freeze building Jewish settlements and dismantle illegal “outposts”, to fulfill his obligations and keep his promises to the U.S. government.

Kurtzer’s criticism of Sharon was unexpected since the Israeli PM gained unconditional American support during the last three years for his campaign to isolate the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and “crack down” on extremist Islamic groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Sharon had promised the American President, George Bush, and his National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, to remove all unauthorized outposts from the West Bank. US officials estimate there are 100 outposts, many of which are actually “dummy” or uninhabited, erected for negotiation purposes and further settlements expansion.

“These are commitments undertaken by Israel, they’re not a result of any pressure from our side, so this is something that Israel undertook to do, and therefore, sure, we expect them to be fulfilled," Kurtzer said in an interview with the Israeli Radio.

Although phase I of the roadmap requires that Israel dismantles all outposts built since March 2001, Israeli courts have issued several orders preventing their dismantlement, for example the removal of Givat Haroeh, one of the largest West Bank outposts has been repeatedly halted by the courts.

In light of these developments, Israeli State Prosecutor Nava Ben-Or said that the state prosecuter’s office is considering ordering a full-scale investigation into suspicions that the Treasury and Housing Ministry transferred tens of millions of Israeli shekels to budgets that were used to build infrastructures for illegal outposts in the West Bank.

It was found that while the Israeli Defense Ministry was suppposed to be dismantling outposts, the Housing Ministry was actually funding those unauthorized outposts, claiming that they were “suberbs” outside the official jurisdiction of the established settlement.

Most of these outposts take place on hill tops, to overlook Palestinian cities and villages; their placement was originally a suggestion by the current Israeli PM to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

In other relevant news, in a survey conducted recently between Israeli Jews, the majority of people surveyed believed that Israeli Arabs present a threat to Israel’s security and should be encouraged to leave the country.

The author of this survey, Professor Gavriel Ben Dor of the University of Haifa, said that of 1,016 Israelis 64 percent believe the Israeli government should encourage Israeli Arabs to leave the country and 55 percent think they constitute a threat to Israeli security.

Israeli Arabs constitute about 20 percent of Israel’s population and should theoretically enjoy full civil and legal rights, but suffer from civil and economic discrimination.

The survey also found that 46 percent of Israeli Jews believe that Israeli Arabs should lose their right to vote and not be allowed to sit in Israeli parliament.

Ben Dor said that such results were the consequence of four years of “violence,” while Mohammad Barakeh, an Israeli Arab and a member of the parliament said these results were "depressing and worrying."