Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has appointed a ministerial committee to monitor future construction in the territories and in communities surrounding Jerusalem.
In a decision adopted at Sunday’s weekly meeting, the Cabinet created the committee, which will include Rabin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Finance Minister Avraham Shohat, Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Justice Minister David Libai and Communications Minister Shulamit Aloni.
Although the other committee members were drawn from the ranks of Labor ministers, Aloni was the sole representative from the Meretz-bloc, the government’s coalition partner that opposes all settlement expansion.
In a statement issued after the meeting, the Cabinet again backed Rabin’s affirmation last week that the government would move to strengthen the unification of Jerusalem through development within the municipal borders of the city.
The new ministerial committee will approve any government building plans within existing settlements and will monitor private construction in the territories. Any expropriation of Arab lands for construction will require committee approval.
But the Cabinet members agreed Sunday that for security reasons, the government can take lands to build roads for Israeli settlers to bypass Arab communities in the West Bank.
The week before Sunday’s meeting, political observers expected that the Cabinet discussion on settlement activity would become a battle about Jerusalem and the belt of communities – such as Ma’aleh Adumim, Givat Ze’ev and Betar – around the capital.
Last week, Peres said “Greater Jerusalem” was a literary concept and that all building beyond the city’s 1967 borders should be halted.
“Building which is necessary for normal life, like schools, private apartments, we are not going to stop,” he told Israel Radio. “But we are not going to build new settlements, to confiscate land or to enlarge territorially the existing settlements.”
Meretz ministers, who are against continued building beyond Jerusalem’s municipal borders, met last week with the prime minister to present their demands, which included a call to stop all settlement construction in the West Bank.
Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer recently announced an ambitious plan for building some 30,000 housing units in the Jerusalem area as well as in the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem.
The government committee established Sunday was seen as an attempt to reach a compromise between Ben-Eliezer’s plans and the left-wing Meretz ministers’ demand that all settlement activity be stopped.
Opposition members and residents from Jerusalem’s satellite communities met in Ma’aleh Adumim on Sunday to discuss the government decision. They pledged to take a strong response if building were halted in their areas.
Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu said the government should continue building around the capital as a response to terror. “I think that you only have to listen to the statements of terrorist organizations who say outright the will expel us from Jerusalem,” he told Israel Television.
“I think the Government should respond to this terrorism with a powerful message that we will not freeze or curtail building of Jerusalem. We will increase it.”
On Tuesday, the government narrowly survived a no-confidence motion on Jerusalem. The fervently Orthodox Shas Party joined the opposition in the 61-53 vote.
The internal debate came after last week’s meeting with Rabin, Peres and Palestine Liberation Chairman Yasser Arafat.
During the Jan. 19 meeting, Rabin clarified the government’s stand on settlements, saying that it stood by its decision to freeze all new government building in the territories, with the exception of building four bypass roads in preparation for an Israeli army withdrawal from Arab population centers in the West Bank.
Last week, Palestinians protesting Israeli settlement activity launched demonstrations in several West Bank towns, including Hebron, Tulkarm and Nablus.
In one demonstration last week near the West Bank settlement of Pesagot, Israeli army troops used stun grenades to disperse hundreds of Palestinian protesters.
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.
