Israel stays removal of hard-liners

Press, 21 April 1982, Page 9

Israel stays removal of hard-liners

NZPA-Reuter Tel Aviv Israel announced a oneday halt yesterday in its painful task of forcibly removing northern Sinai settlers, some of whom have threatened suicide rather than leave the area captured from Egypt in 1967. Thousands of Army reinforcements were brought in yesterday to start the difficult task of bodily removing the militant settlers who oppose the return to Egypt of the area by April 26, as provided in the peace agreements between the two countries. The initial targets were small rural settlements where soldiers carried out the settlers one by one, some removed from rooftops by a crane. But the toughest assignment will be at Yamit, the biggest community built by Israel in the captured area and now almost evacuated except for small pockets of extremists who have holed up in buildings reinforced with barbed wire and sandbags. Some are said to have weapons, while others have said that they will take their lives if any attempt is made to remove them. Israel’s chief rabbis and the mothers of a few militants have tried to persuade the mainly young men and women to’ leave peacefully,

but with no visible results. The Israel Defence Ministry announced a 24-hour halt in the action because of Remembrance Day, observed today in honour of the six million Jews killed in Nazi Europe. The Ministry also partially lifted its ban on the entry of journalists into the area, allowing reporters but no cameramen. The Israelis said cameramen would only inflame tempers still more and make the removal task even more difficult. Meanwhile, Israel and Egypt studied new ideas to settle differences between the two countries before the final Sinai withdrawal date. The Egyptian Foreign Minister (Mr Kamal Hassan Ali) returned to Cairo yesterday after conferring with the Prime Minister (Mr Menachem Begin) for four hours in Jerusalem. An American Under-Secre-tary of State. Walter Stoessel, who has been shuttling between Jerusalem and Cairo to bridge the differences, conferred separately with both sides. Mr Ali said he was confident that a solution would be found to Israeli fears that Egypt was growing closer to the Palestine Liberation Organisation and overmanning military units in the area of the Sinai already returned to Egyptian control.