Israeli Right tries to stop freeze on settlements

Settlers and partymen attack Netanyahu over possible suspension of new construction to enable peace talks.

Israeli settlers lay a foundation stone to a new neighborhood near the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim, West Bank.

TEL AVIV // Israeli right-wing politicians and settler leaders have launched a last-minute campaign this week to pressure the government to reject the US call for a freeze on construction of Jewish homes in occupied Palestinian territory. The efforts by the Right come just days before Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is expected to reach a compromise with the United States on a temporary halt to settlement activity. Israeli media reported yesterday that he is likely to agree to a lull of six to nine months in the occupied West Bank.

George Mitchell, the top US envoy to the Middle East, is expected to arrive in Israel on Saturday to try to finalise a deal with the Israeli leader. An agreement on settlements is meant to pave the way for a possible tripartite meeting between Mr Netanyahu, Barack Obama, the US president, and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the western-backed Palestinian Authority, at the UN General Assembly in late September.

In what may be an indication of progress in the US-Israeli negotiations, Mr Netanyahu's office said yesterday he would travel to Egypt next week to meet Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, for the second time since taking power in March. The two are likely to discuss US efforts to persuade Israel to stop settlement activity in return for steps by Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel. The prime minister is said to be hoping that such goodwill gestures could help him sell a partial moratorium on settlements to his power base in the right-wing Likud Party, whose growing opposition to a freeze may threaten his premiership.

The Israeli Right has vowed to fight any moratorium on building, accusing Mr Netanyahu of caving in to US pressure. In recent days, they have stepped up protests, pro-settler rallies and media interviews in a bid to drum up opposition among parliamentarians, government ministers and right-wing voters. Pinhas Wallerstein, one of the co-heads of the Yesha council, the main settlers' lobby, was quoted by news agencies as saying yesterday: "We will do whatever we can, democratically, to prevent a freeze that is nothing more than capitulation before Obama."

During a mock cornerstone-laying ceremony in an especially contentious area outside Jerusalem this week, Uzi Landau, the national infrastructure minister and a member of Yisrael Beiteinu, a far-Right party, told the participants, who included legislators and other government ministers: "This land belongs to us and to us only. The Arabs are the conquerors. This freeze goes against our human rights. What will we tell families? Don't bring any more children and don't build a house?"

And in what may amount to an open revolt within the Likud, Silvan Shalom, the vice prime minister and a political rival of Mr Netanyahu who has long sought the party's leadership, this week slammed the premier for abandoning the Likud's ideology. Speaking to hundreds of supporters, government ministers, parliament members and settler leaders, he said: "We are here to save the path of the Likud. Paying the price of freezing settlements to get a meeting with [Mr Abbas] is not the right thing to do right now."

Mr Shalom added that the fate of the settlements should be decided during final-status negotiations with the Palestinians and not before. Still, some right-wing members of the governing coalition pledged not to topple Mr Netanyahu after the construction lull. Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and head of Yisrael Beiteinu, said yesterday: "You cannot choke and punish the residents of the [West Bank]. But we will conduct all these arguments about a freeze internally. We have no intention of reaching the situation in which the Right ousts a right-wing government."

Mr Netanyahu has indicated that even if a freeze is implemented, his support for Jewish building in occupied Palestinian territory will continue. Haaretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper, this week published a protocol of the minutes of Mr Netanyahu's meeting in August with prominent West Bank settler leaders who claimed the government's curbs on settlement expansion "humiliated" them. At the meeting, he said: "Ultimately, we are all interested in the same thing, but one must act wisely."

Mr Netanyahu may have been referring to his bid to appease both the Israeli Right and the United States, the country's staunchest ally. This week, for example, he approved the construction of 455 new homes in the West Bank, just days before he was expected to also mollify the United States by agreeing to a settlement halt. Yossi Ezrahi, a political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said the new approvals would help clinch the prime minister's political survival.

"Mr Netanyahu wants to soften the absolutely predictable political cost of the settlement freeze. It will make the blow, which could be politically lethal, more tolerable," he said. [e-mail]