The State Department has declined to confirm a press report that the Reagan Administration has expressed concern to Israel that Ethiopian Jews are being settled on the West Bank.
But the Department’s deputy spokesman Alan Romberg made clear last Friday that the U.S. opposes any type of settlement activity in Judaea and Samaria. “The well-known U.S. view is that any and all settlement activity on the West Bank is unhelpful and an obstacle toward a just and lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors,” Romberg said.
He added that the U.S. “makes every effort to insure that the U.S. government funds are not used for settlement activity on the West Bank.” The U.S. has provided this year a $15 million grant to the United Israel Appeal to be used by the Jewish Agency in Israel toward the resettlement and absorption of refugees, including refugees from Ethiopia, Romberg said.
Diplomatic sources here said that Israel had not received any complaint from the U.S. on the placing of Ethiopian Jews on the West bank and expressed astonishment that a fuss could be made over such a small number of people.
It was noted that the Ethiopian immigrants are being placed in five absorption centers, only one of which, Kiryat Arba, is on the West Bank, and the center is only housing 50 to 60 families. It was also pointed out that Israel has always maintained that Jews have a right to live anywhere in Eretz Israel.
Romberg’s comments came on his last day as deputy spokesman, a post he held for three and a half years serving under Dean Fischer, Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s spokesman, and John Hughes, the spokesman for Secretary of State George Shultz until recently.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
