About 10,000 West Bank settlers and their backers filled part of downtown Jerusalem Wednesday, listening to fiery speeches, dancing in circles and pledging to defy a building ban imposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The relatively large turnout on a cold, wintry night reflected support for increasingly fierce settler resistance to the government ban on most new housing.

The ban is designed to encourage resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Settlers held signs and banners that read, "We will continue to build" and "stop Iran's nukes, not our homes."

Netanyahu, a former ally, is widely perceived by the settlers to have caved in to American pressure.

Images of angry settlers blocking government inspectors from delivering stop-work orders and thousands of protesters across from his residence could help Netanyahu paint himself to be going as far as he can under the circumstances in the search for peace.

Palestinians dismiss the prime minister's building restrictions as insincere and insufficient, since they do not include east Jerusalem or 3,000 homes already under construction in the West Bank. The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem as parts of a future state.

They say they will not resume talks until all settlement construction ceases.

At the demonstration, speakers railed against the restrictions and the crowd chanted, "Break the freeze!"

Settler leader Dani Dayan complained, "Not one Jewish home can be built now."

An area was set aside for those who preferred a separation between men and women for religious reasons. Most of the demonstrators were Orthodox Jews _ many of them teenagers.

Netanyahu announced the 10-month halt in most new West Bank housing construction last month in an attempt to restart peace talks, which broke down a year ago. The restrictions infuriated Jewish settlers and their backers in Netanyahu's hard-line coalition.

"I think this is a violation of people's basic rights if they can't build homes on their own property," said Jamie Levavi, a 25-year-old settler originally from Cleveland, Ohio. "If the people of Israel speak up enough, our own government will listen to us."

The settlers have been struggling to regain their strength since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, uprooting all 8,000 Israelis who were living there, despite vocal and sometimes violent settler opposition.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, himself a settler, said the Jerusalem protest was legitimate.