Israel approved on Wednesday the construction of 184 new housing units in East Jerusalem beyond Green Line, officials told Xinhua.

A spokeswoman with the Jerusalem Municipality said that permits were issued for the building of 144 housing units in Har Homa and 40 housing units in Pisgat Ze'ev, both are settlement neighborhoods of Jerusalem which Israel annexed following the 1967 Mideast War.

The decision was made at the weekly meeting of the Jerusalem Local Planning Committee, a municipal body in charge of construction in the city.

Ground works are expected to begin in a few months, the spokeswoman said. She added that the lands were bought by Israeli private real estate developers a few years ago, and today's permits represent the final stage of the approval procedure.

"New construction in Jerusalem is necessary for the benefit of all sectors and for young people to be able to live and buy apartments in Jerusalem," she added in a written statement.

The decision comes two days after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with US President Barack Obama in the White House, discussing the state of the peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.

Abbas presented Obama with a document compiled by his team, detailing Israel's plan to build thousands of new housing units in the West Bank. According to the document, since the resumption of negotiations in July, Israel has begun the construction of 10,509 housing units.

The settlements are deemed by international law as illegal and are dubbed by the international community as an obstacle to peace. The Palestinians charge that the expansion of the settlements makes the implantation of two-state solution impossible.

The settlement issue tops the US-brokered negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, which restarted last summer after a three-year halt over Israel's construction in the West Bank.