They were festively dressed, in black, adhering to the holiday dress code of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The bearded man wore an expensive high round fur hat of the kind worn centuries ago in Central Europe. The women and girls followed, one of them pushing a carriage, trying to avoid the puddles. Their son covered his wide-rimmed hat with a black plastic shopping bag.

Eventually the light-brown track they used will become a multilane road in the West Bank settlement town of Modi'in Ilit, about halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Up the southern hill, workers were building Green Park, a row of new houses. Scaffolds surrounded them, and a big sign offered three, four and five-room "Quality apartments with an option for two more rooms."

Shlomi Elboim, of Jerusalem, drove up with his family to look it over. Soon he will marry and they were looking for an apartment.

"Seeing how easily the settlers were evicted from the Gaza Strip, aren't you concerned about moving here?" a reporter asked.

Elboim's answer reflected the attitude of many ultra-orthodox families who moved to Modi'in Illit and to Beitar Illit (near Bethlehem), making them the fastest-growing settlement towns.

They wanted to live in a homogenous orthodox Jewish community, segregated, and they wanted it at a reasonable price. Their families expand quickly. On average they have seven children per family.

"Those who lived in Gush Katif (in the Gaza Strip) for ideological reasons found it difficult to tear themselves away," Elboim said. His motive was different.

"If you buy a flat and get your investment back (when ordered to leave) why ... care?" he asked.

His family, in the car with him, would have been happy if he could get a three-room apartment in Jerusalem's Geula neighborhood, his father Yirmiyahu said. That is a cramped, old neighborhood, but apartments in Jerusalem are expensive.

According to Peace Now, there are 125 "official settlements" in the West Bank and 101 "unauthorized outposts" that have been established in the past decade. Half the outposts have been established since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon assumed power, Peace Now said.

Its report, published Wednesday, said that in August and September alone mobile homes were added in several outposts, permanent houses were under construction in others, and land was being prepared for permanent construction in 15 "outposts."

The report noted that according to the internationally devised "road map" for peace, which Israel and the Palestinian Authority accepted in 2003, Israel was supposed to "immediately" dismantle settlement outposts erected since Sharon assumed power.

The "road map" provided, also, that the government freeze "all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)."

However, "Despite this commitment, not only is nothing being done and not a single outpost has been dismantled, but in at least five outposts ... which were, in fact, supposed to be dismantled over two years ago, construction and expansion activities have been noted.... Illegal construction in the outposts continues," Peace Now said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to raise the settlement issue with U.S. President George Bush when they meet Thursday in Washington. It is one of several subjects he intends to raise, his Foreign Affairs Minister Nasser Al-Kidwa said in a statement.

According to the Palestinian Wafa news agency, al-Kidwa hoped the Bush administration would pressure Israel to end what Wafa called Israel's "Intensification of colonization, constructing the Apartheid Wall and judaization of Jerusalem that aim at imposing the facts on the ground."

"We hope that (the) American President will work on carrying out his vision (of having two states, Israel and Palestine) ... based on unchanging the status of (the) borders of 1949, until they (Palestinians and Israelis) reach an agreement through political negotiations," Al-Kidwa said.

A senior Israeli official, who spoke to United Press International on condition he not be identified by name or title, said Israel will not remove the illegal outposts now because doing so "would be a prize to terror. ... If we move them there will be a wave of terror."

Terror emerged from "every place that we have returned (to Palestinian control) and where we eased (our pressure)," the official said.

He denied Israel was building beyond "The line of construction ...We're not building anything new and there is no provocative construction," he insisted.

U.S. and Israeli officials had tried to determine where that "line of construction" runs, but the talks bogged down, officials from both sides indicated. Peace Now said the settlements' built-up area covers 3 percent of the West Bank but the "municipal areas" earmarked for them cover more than 40 percent of the West Bank.

Some 240,000 settlers and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank.

A 47-year-old Palestinian laborer with a gray stubble emerged from one of the houses to talk to this reporter.

The man, who asked not to be identified, said he was from the neighboring village of Bil'in.

Every Friday Bil'in's residents and supporters clash with soldiers over the security fence rising there.

He said his permit to work in Israel-proper expired, but he has a wife and three children to feed, so he took the job of helping to build a settlement. He folded his arms to indicate the alternative -- idleness. "Stay home? We have no other place to work... That's why I came here," he said.

The argument seemed to mirror Elboim's reasons for moving there. He and his future wife would have stayed in Jerusalem if they could afford to do so.

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