In a move which may further increase tension in the Middle East, Israel is expected to approve nearly 13 hundred new housing units in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday. Israel's defense minister Avigdor Lieberman said permits for an additional 25-hundred housing units, which are in different phases of planning, are also up for discussion. The settlements are one of the most hotly contested issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The international community considers illegal the Israeli settlements built in the West Bank, a territory which Israel captured during the 1967 Six-Day War.