Settlements race starts

Press, 13 April 1984, Page 8

Settlements race starts

NZPA-Reuter Jerusalem The Israeli Government had launched a drive to build as many new settlements as possible on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip before the General Election on July 23, officials said yesterday.

The Ministerial Settlement Committee had approved the building of five new settlements and would meet today to approve two more, they said.

An aide of the Science Minister, Dr Yuval Ne’eman, who chairs the committee, said that 20 new settlements were in the pipeline, and it was hoped construction could begin before July. Dr Ne’eman and other hardline Ministers fear that the settlement drive will be halted if the Opposition Labour Party, ahead in recent opinion polls, wins the elections. The aide said that the Finance Minister, Mr Yigal Cohen-Orgad, who had previously announced his intention to cut the settlement budget, had changed his mind and was allocating funds for the new drive.

An estimated 30,000 Isrealis live on the West Bank and 5000 in Gaza. The Arab

population of the two areas is about 1.3 million.

The State Budget, approved by Parliament last month, provided about SUS34O million ($516 million) for. building new settlements and expanding existing ones. Finance Ministry sources said that Mr Cohen-Orgad had decided to allocate the whole amount in the next three months.

The Labour Party opposes building Israeli outposts in West Bank regions densely populated by Arabs but says that it would not dismantle existing settlements.

Dr Ne’eman’s aide said that there was still not as much money available as his Minister would have liked.

“He has decided to go ahead and build as many settlements as possible anyway, working on the principle that we should skimp in quality but not in quantity,” he said. The new settlements would be very small and living standards in them would be lower than hoped but, “even 15 families on a hillside is a fact on the land that can never be taken away,” the aide said.