Nrp Threatens Rabin with Coalition Crisis if Government Moves to Oust Group of Settlers from Samaria

The National Religious Party is threatening Premier Yitzhak Rabin with a coalition crisis if the government moves to evacuate a group of Gush Emunim settlers from Kadum in the Samaria region of the West Bank. Interior Minister Yosef Burg of the NRP warned Rabin yesterday that if their evacuation is ordered “it means bringing closer” a day of reckoning, meaning that early elections would have to be held.

Burg expressed “amazement” that while Foreign Minister Yigal Allon was on an official visit abroad, his close associates were spreading “news” that the Minister has decided to demand the evacuation of the Gush Emunim when he returns. The Interior Minister implied that this would lead to the immediate resignations of Welfare Minister Zevulun Hammer, an NRP militant and that he, Burg, and Religious Affairs Minister Yitzhak Raphael, would have to do likewise.

NRP threats to bring down the coalition have occurred in every government in which the religious faction has participated but rarely materialized. This time, however, the Gush Emunim are supported by Defense Minister Shimon Peres, leader of the Labor Party’s Rafi wing, who could create a serious rift within, the Labor Alignment on the issue of Jewish settlement on the West Bank.

SEES NO LOGIC FOR BAN

Replying to questions by students at Bar IIan University yesterday, Peres said he hoped a majority of the government would support the right of the Gush Emunim group to remain where they are. “I am for it,” he said. “I can find no logic whatever in the State permitting settlement in Judaea but banning it in Samaria. We have the right to settle in both areas so long as we don’t deprive the Arabs,” Peres said.

The group at Kadum is part of a much larger illegal settlement attempt by the Gush Emunim in the Sebastia region of Samaria last November. The majority of them left peacefully when the government agreed to permit a token number of families to remain at the Kadum army camp under military protection.

Subsequently they were permitted to set up a makeshift settlement outside the military camp on land controlled by the army. The government made the compromise in order to avoid the spectacle of Israeli soldiers forcibly removing Jewish settlers. The agreement was bitterly criticized at the time by Cabinet “doves.” The government bars any settlement without official authorization and it has in the past used force to remove illegal squatters from West Bank sites.

The Cabinet has been expected for some time to debate Jewish settlement in Judaea and Samaria but so far it has postponed discussion of the volatile issue. It is expected to come up, however, after Allon returns from abroad. Informed sources say that a general settlement project would be approved and the Gush Emunim group would be offered alternative sites if they quit Kadum.