Large contingents of Israeli troops surrounded a site near the Arab town of Nablus on the West Bank today in an effort to persuade a group of Jewish squatters to depart peacefully. The group, consisting of several dozen men, women and children took over the site and demanded permission to establish a settlement near the Biblical Schechem which they claim belongs to Israel by historic and religious right.
The squatters, who brought an electric generator to the spot and proceeded to set up an improvised synagogue and yeshiva, were joined later by Likud MKs Ariel Sharon and Geula Cohen and by Yehuda Ben Meir and Zevulun Hammer, leaders of the National Religious Party’s militant “Young Guard.” They were further encouraged by the arrival of the aged Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the NRP’s spiritual mentor. The incident, apart from its security implications, poses a delicate political issue for Premier Yitzhak Rabin’s newly installed government.
The incident occurred on the seventh anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan. The squatters said their act was in celebration of the “liberation” of the West Bank. Troops rushed to the scene were apparently under orders to exercise utmost restraint. Brig. Gen. Yona Efrat, Commander of the central region and Brig. Gen. Rafael Vardi, Military Governor of Judaea-Samaria, came to the site to make personal appeals to the squatters to leave. When these went unheeded, soldiers began to dismantle the squatters’ equipment and encountered resistance. They were ordered to desist for the time being. The army enlisted the help of its chief chaplain, Rabbi Mordechai Firon, but his effort at persuasion also failed.
This evening the site resembled an armed camp and there were indications that the squatters might be removed forcibly, which would be sure to raise an outcry from the opposition benches in the Knesset. Various settlers groups have been pressing for some time for permission to establish Jewish settlements in the administered territories but the government has turned them down. A precedent of sorts was established in 1968 when Orthodox Jews installed themselves in the West Bank town of Hebron, south of Jerusalem and defied government orders to leave. Political pressure on the government of former Premier Golda Meir from right-wing and religious quarters forced the government to yield and establish a Jewish quarter, Kiryat Araba, adjacent to Hebron.
Meanwhile, the Six-Day War anniversary passed with almost no disturbances in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem.
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