Cabinet Freezes All Settlements Activities Till After Summit Talks

The Cabinet decided today to freeze all settlement activities on the West Bank until after the summit at Camp David Sept. 5, it was reported. But the issue over the proposal to establish three new settlements in the Jericho area and two in the northern Jordan Valley is expected to continue to simmer.

It is also expected to come up, at least obliquely, at next Sunday’s Cabinet meeting when the Cabinet begins the political discussions in preparation for the meetings between Premier Menachem Begin, President Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at Camp David.

MAY HAVE HURT ISRAEL ABROAD

Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, according to sources, told the Cabinet that the published accounts yesterday of the five new settlements may have hurt Israel abroad prior to the summit. Many ministers expressed the fear that the United States and Egypt would issue statements condemning the settlements, thus damaging prospects for Camp David. The Cabinet hopes that by freezing discussions on the settlements it will avoid this from happening. (See related stories this page and P.3.)

Deputy Premier Yigael Yadin, who was in charge of today’s Cabinet meeting and who originally planned to bring up the new settlements which he opposes, also did not put it on the agenda because Begin was on vacation. Also absent today was Yadin’s chief antagonist on the issue, Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon.

Yadin has been arguing strongly that no government committee has given approval to the five settlements. But Cabinet Secretary Arye Naor said late yesterday that the Cabinet, sitting as the ministerial security committee on June 28, decided to establish five new military outposts on the Jordan River.

Naor’s announcement came after Sharon warned that unless the government officially clarified the situation, he would issue his own statement on radio and television regarding the June 28 decision. “I will not let you spill my blood any longer and hide behind my back,” Sharon told Yadin. Yadin ordered Naor to issue the statement after consulting with Begin.

DISPUTE VALIDITY OF JUNE 28 DECISION

Should the Cabinet approve the settlements Yadin, who is the leader of the Democratic Movement for Change (DMC), has threatened to take the matter up with the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. The Begin government’s agreement with the DMC allows it to go before the Knesset committee when it disagrees on any settlement plan for the occupied territories.

Yadin maintains that the June 28 action was invalid since the Cabinet did not review the entire issue. Sharon argues that six weeks have passed since the ministerial committee’s decision and since there is a two-week period for a minister to appeal and Yadin did not do it, the decision is valid.

The issue came to light after Sharon met with leaders of the kibbutz and moshav settlement groups last week to urge them to prepare volunteers and material for the new settlements. All agreed except for Mapam’s Kibbutz Haartzi. Also complicating the issue and expected to become a major political controversy is that the military censor barred news of the June 28 meeting and that of Sharon’s meetings with the settlement movements’ leaders. There is a belief in some quarters that this was done to prevent unfavorable political reaction abroad.

Meanwhile, at the weekly meeting of the World Zionist Organization Executive today, Raanan Weitz, co-chairman of the WZO settlement deportment, said in response to questions that the five proposed settlements were within the areas earmarked by the previous Labor governments for settlements. He said he hoped the issue would not become one for partisan wrangling. Weitz stressed that the WZO’s involvement at present was strictly in terms of overall planning since there were no implementation orders or budgetary resources.