Palestinian leaders are urging Israel to halt plans to build 740 new homes next year on occupied land near Jerusalem. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Israel’s plans to expand the settlements is “sabotaging negotiation efforts.”

Salam Fayyad: “Pursuing peace, on the one hand, and pursuit of a policy based on continued settlement expansion are two parallel paths that will never meet. They cannot meet, by definition. There’s a basic fundamental contradiction here — settlement expansion has to stop if a peace process is to have any credibility. This is what has been agreed, what was agreed at Annapolis. We expect for there to be a complete cessation of these activities.”

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Palestinian demonstrators scuffled with Israeli soldiers on Friday during a demonstration against the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank. Protest organizer Sami Talhami was one of several activists dressed like Santa.

Sami Talhami: “From Bethlehem, from where Jesus was born, from where the apartheid wall is being built around our villages and cities, we say, yes, there is hope. There is hope for peace, and there is a chance for peace. It needs the world to move. It needs the world to realize that there is injustice happening here and for the world to say we will work for peace in the holy land.”