Premier Golda Meir told the Knesset today that she changed her mind on the issue of land purchases in the administered territories after seeing the list of applications from private persons for permission to buy Arab lands and watching the prices “leap skyward” during the two weeks of nationwide debate on the subject. She said that claims that she was pressured by Washington to change her mind on altering the status quo were “laughable” and she would not bother to rebut them. Israel’s record on pressure since 1967 needs to defense, the Premier declared.
Mrs. Meir admitted that she was reluctantly prepared to go along with a compromise, offered by Justice Minister Yaacov Shimshou Shapiro, that would have permitted Jews to purchase Arab land under strict government supervision and license requirements. But she said she changed her mind last week when she was given a list of applications for the purchase of huge tracts of land in the administered territories. She said the applications added up to over 100,000 dunams (25,000 acres) of land between Jerusalem and Ramallah and Jerusalem and Bethlehem. She said the size of the tracts led her to believe that speculators were at work in at least some cases.
Mrs. Meir spoke in reply to motions of no confidence from the Gahal and Free Center factions. She stressed that settlement on government-purchased land in the administered territories was going ahead as planned. She noted that 45 settlements have been set up so far in the territories and observed that the Cabinet had never stated that any part of those areas was barred from Jewish settlement. But every new project must have Cabinet approval, she said.
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