JNF to Continue Work in Rafah Salient

Moshe Rivlin, chairman of the Jewish National Fund, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency yesterday that the JNF would continue its ground-breaking work in the Rafah salient of northern Sinai in compliance with yesterday’s Cabinet decision. He stressed that the land development agency does not make policy but simply carries out the instructions of the government.

The JNF and the World Zionist Organization’s settlement department were reported by the media in recent days to be preparing ground for additional settlements in the Rafah salient and other parts of northern Sinai despite Premier Menachem Begin’s peace plan which calls for returning Sinai to Egyptian sovereignty. The JNF is “not preparing the land for any new settlements,” Rivlin declared. He said it was executing a government decision, made last Tuesday, to prepare additional land for agricultural purposes, not for the construction of new settlements.

He said yesterday’s Cabinet decision was actually a clarification of Tuesday’s decision. The Cabinet made it clear that no new settlements are presently under construction. It agreed, however, to strengthen existing settlements by increasing the land available for agriculture and to increase the civilian urban and rural population. Such work is underway at Pri’el and Talmei Yosef, near Sadat, where it was begun some months ago.

Sources in the WZO’s settlement department told the JTA that Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon had given a “wide interpretation” to Tuesday’s Cabinet decision which he viewed as a green light to establish more settlements in northern Sinai. It was Sharon’s erroneous interpretation that required yesterday’s clarification, the sources said.