The Bush administration Thursday strongly criticized Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s government for using its caretaker status to start new settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“We have repeatedly urged the government of Israel to refrain from establishing more settlements or expanding existing settlements,” said State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwilcr.
“It would be disappointing that a leadership that was not prepared to go forward on peace would be prepared to take steps on settlements, which in our view make it more difficult to develop a meaningful peace process,” she said.
Her remarks were a veiled reference to the refusal of Shamir and his Likud colleagues to agree to Secretary of State James Baker’s proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue without certain guarantees.
It was Labor’s demands that Likud agree to the talks that led to the collapse of the coalition government.
Tutwilcr repeated the U.S. opposition to settlements as an obstacle to peace in the wake of a report Thursday in The Washington Post, which said that the Israeli government plans a crash program to break ground on four new settlements and install permanent housing for rabbinical students encamped in Nablus and Jews living in a trailer park near Hebron.
Shamir, who is also acting defense and finance ministers, has named Michael Dekel, one of Likud’s most ardent advocates for settlements, to be in charge of settlements for the Defense Ministry during the interim period.
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