Jewish settlers in the West Bank this week stepped up pressure on Defense Minister Moshe Arens to rectify the deteriorating security situation in the administered territories.
They also embarked on an ad hoc settlement-building drive of their own, reflecting impatience with the government’s process of authorizing new sites.
The settlers have blamed the defense establishment and the Israel Defense Force for the recent spate of armed attacks on civilians by Arab gunmen.
The latest was the murder Sunday of Dr. Albert Gluck, an American who headed the archaeology department at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. He was shot to death by two bullets as he was about to visit the residence of his assistant.
Police suspect Palestinian nationalists, since Shabiba, the youth movement of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Al Fatah faction, had opposed the recent renewal of Gluck’s term, insisting that a Palestinian be appointed head of the department.
Four other civilians have been killed in the territories since the end of October, when the peace talks opened in Madrid.
Settlers demonstrated outside Arens’ residence in the Savyon suburb of Tel Aviv this week and dogged him around the West Bank, complaining of the “poor state of security in the territories.”
Hundreds, including women and children, tried to prevent an army helicopter from landing near Hebron, because they believed Arens was aboard.
‘DOING WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE’
The settlers say they have nothing against the defense minister personally or politically. Arens’ nationalist credentials are not in question, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir expressed his full support and confidence in him Monday.
In fact, the IDF has reinforced troops in the territories in recent days. But Arens denied Tuesday that the move was related to the settlers’ demands.
“We are simply doing what needs to be done,” he said.
In any case, the settlers are not satisfied. They are determined to build a new settlement called Yad Yair in the Ramallah area, despite Arens’ orders that no settlement can be built on that site.
They call it Yad Yair in memory of Yair Mendelsohn, a settler from nearby Dolev who was fatally shot there by Arab gunmen last year.
Meanwhile, 90 new mobile homes were deployed this week to expand Beit El, a Jewish settlement north of Ramallah.
But Jewish militants buying up Arab property in the Old City of Jerusalem ran into a snag this week, when Attorney General Yosef Harish barred their Company for the Development of the Jewish Quarter from buying property elsewhere in East Jerusalem.
Harish acted on a complaint from Knesset member Dedi Zucker of the Citizens Rights Movement that the company was buying property in the Christian Quarter.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
