Settlement plan arouses anger.

Press, 18 May 1984, Page 14

Settlement plan arouses anger.

An ambitious plan to settle more than 3000 Jews in the heart of the West Bank town of Hebron has been presented to Jewish investors from -abroad — largely in the United States. The man behind the scheme is Rabbi Moshe Levinger, himself married to an immigrant from the United States. He was one of the first Jewish settlers to return to Hebron in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War. Historically, Hebron is one of Israel’s holy cities and was actually King David’s capital before

From

Jerusalem. Jews lived there through the ages until Arab riots in 1929. Jews who survived that massacre fled the city.

Rabbi Levinger’s plan is to rebuild what he considers to be the old Jewish quarter and would involve driving a swath of Jewish settlements across most of the city, linking it with the Jewish suburb of Kiryat Arba, construction of which began after the Six Day War. It

ARIE HASKELL,

in Jerusalem

now houses several thousand people. He believes that the project could be completed within six years, and this despite the fact that senior officials at the Housing Ministry in Jerusalem have expressed surprise and consternation. These officials add that no budgets are available and warn that the Rabbi’s attempt to use the Ministry’s name as a backer for

the scheme is tantamount to fraud. Asked for his reaction, Bethlehem’s mayor Elias Freij said that he is strengthened in his belief that the way the Israelis vote on July 23 will determine the future of the Middle East. If Labour were to win the road would be open to negotiations, hopefully leading to peace. A victory for the ruling Likud would mean ultimate annexation of the West Bank and Gaza and decades of conflict. — Copyright, London Observer Service.