The forthcoming World Zionist Congress will be asked to approve a five-year plan calling for the establishment of 35 new settlements in Israel proper and in the administered territories. The plan has already been approved by Premier Yitzhak Rabin and the ministerial settlement committee.
Twenty-eight of the projected settlements will be within Israel’s pre-June 1967 borders. Those in the administered areas will be located so as not to impinge on Arab villages and towns, according to Prof. Raanan Weitz, chairman of the World Zionist Organization’s settlement department. Weitz, who headed the team that prepared the plan, said it coincided with the so-called Allon plan proposed by Foreign Minister Yigal Allon which calls for Israel’s withdrawal from most of the West Bank.
Three settlements are planned in western Samaria, a region that has been the target of illegal settlement attempts by the Gush Emunim. Fourteen settlements are projected for the Rafah salient between the Gaza Strip and Sinai and one at Sharm el-Sheikh at the southeastern tip of the Sinai peninsula.
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