Pressure by one of the religious parties in Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s coalition government apparently has forced the Defense Ministry to back away from its decision to remove civilians from a settlement established in the West Bank on Monday.
But there were signs of conflict between the ministry and the Israel Defense Force high command over the issue.
Defense Minister Moshe Arens said Tuesday that the settlement, called Rachelim, would be a Nahal paramilitary outpost for the time being.
But 15 settlers who ensconced themselves in three mobile homes refused to leave. Heavy pressure exerted by the National Religious Party on Shamir and Arens appeared to have won them the right to stay.
Arens told the NRP Knesset faction Thursday he would gladly allow a few settlers to remain on the site while he decided its status “within a few days.”
But the IDF chief of staff, Gen. Ehud Barak, sent a different message. In a radio interview Thursday, he said if the settlers refuse to move out voluntarily, “we will help them.”
Barak denied that he had differences with Arens over how to handle the matter.
The settlement was approved by the Inner Cabinet on Nov. 27 and was named for Rachel Druck, one of two Israelis killed in an Oct. 28 bus ambush at the site south of Nablus known as the Tapuah junction.
But no announcement was made until the first mobile homes were hauled there Monday, which led most Israelis to believe the settlement was a spontaneous response by enraged Jews to the death of Zvi Klein, a settler from Ofra who was fatally wounded driving through the Palestinian town of El-Bireh on Sunday evening.
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