Arens Turns Down Settlement Request, but More Units Slated for Jerusalem

As the Likud government marked its final days this week, Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek lost another round in his battle against Ariel Sharon’s Housing Ministry to prevent the building of Jewish homes in the heart of Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

But at the same time, Defense Minister Moshe Arens rejected a request from Jewish activists to convert two army-run Nahal settlements in the West Bank into civilian ones.

According to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Arens voiced anger at the request, saying the Israeli people had “spoken its word” at the ballot box — namely that Israel should shift its resources from settlement-building to creating jobs and absorbing immigrants.

But that reasoning apparently did not prevail when it came to the question of building Jewish housing in Arab areas of Jerusalem.

Plans to build 200 housing units in the Wadi Joz neighborhood of Jerusalem were approved Tuesday by the Regional Planning and Construction Committee, despite Kollek’s attempt to prevent the panel from convening.

The committee rejected a city plan to build a school for handicapped Arab children on the same site, with representatives of the Housing and Interior ministries proposing to build a Jewish neighborhood instead.

Another panel, the government committee for speeding up housing projects, was scheduled to meet Thursday to consider a second new housing project, this one in the Ras el-Amoud neighborhood, near the Arab village of Silwan.

Kollek sent an urgent cable to Interior Minister Arye Deri, protesting the speedy convening of the two committees, on less than 24 hours’ notice, which he said was tantamount to “a lastminute political hijack.”

He argued that approving the new housing plans was beyond the scope of the planning committee’s authority and that it ran counter to the will of the Israeli people, as expressed in the recent elections.

“Why does one have to build a new Jewish neighborhood on the site which was designed to be an Arab school?” the mayor asked in a radio interview Tuesday.

REQUEST WAS MADE TO SHAMIR

Eli Swissa, the Interior Ministry official in charge of the central region, rejected the allegations. He charged that representatives of the city are the ones responsible for politicizing the committee’s considerations.

Supporters of the Jewish housing argued Tuesday that the new enclave in Wadi Joz would be built on the border between western and East Jerusalem, in a strip between the Shimon Hatzadik Tomb and Mount Scopus, which is not heavily populated by Arabs.

The request for two new civilian settlements in the West Bank was made by Uri Ariel and Ze’ev Hever, two members of the Council of Jewish Settlements of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, at a meeting last Friday with outgoing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

They maintained that the Likud government had committed itself to creating seven new civilian settlements and that the two Nahal outposts — one near Jenin and the other in the Etzion bloc — were among the sites on the list.

While Shamir may have been persuaded by the activists’ case, it is Arens, as defense minister, who has the final say over the building of settlements in the territories.

Arens, who announced after Likud’s defeat in the June 23 elections that he was quitting politics, was quoted in the Israeli press last week as criticizing the “Greater Israel” movement for pursuing settlement-building relentlessly and ignoring the necessity of reaching an agreement with the Palestinians.

His refusal to approve the two new civilian settlements may have been his last chance to translate this conviction into action.