OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 4 December — Israeli settlers are planning to build new neighborhoods in 14 settlements in the West Bank, the Israeli Ma’ariv daily reported yesterday, quoting a settler leader who said settlers wanted to “increase construction” in dozens of settlements.
The construction would take place over the coming three months, the Israeli daily quoted Settlers’ Council leader Bentzi Lieberman as saying.
An internal report by a settlers’ regional council said the Israeli Housing Ministry would invest in the construction of some of the new neighborhoods, while development work in neighborhoods which were already built in other settlements would continue.
According to Ma’ariv, the Israeli Housing Ministry initiated the construction of 1,894 new housing units in the West Bank during 2002
The issue of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories — which the world community regard as illegal — is one of the most intractable in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, with Palestinians demanding they be uprooted as part of any peace settlement.
The current Israeli government of Premier Ariel Sharon has undertaken not to build new settlements, only expand existing ones due to “natural growth”, a vague term which critics say has never been specifically defined.
In another development, Israeli Army chief of staff Moshe Yaalon also said Israel needs to take more pre-emptive military action.
“In the light of the new US strategy, the need is to embark on a pre-emptive course and not only to act after things have happened,” Yaalon said, speaking at the Balance of Israel’s National Security conference held in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.
“Since Operation Defensive Shield, taking things into our own hands is the basis of our response to the Palestinians,” Yaalon said, suggesting Israel should widen the pre-emptive principle of the crackdown it launched in the West Bank in June to other countries.
In a detailed assessment of the strategic environment in the region, Yaalon broke down the various threats faced by Israel into four “circles”.
The Palestinian arena constitutes the first, or closest circle; the hostile countries bordering Israel, such as Lebanon and Syria, make up the second. A third consists of more distant, yet still regional neighbors, and the final circle is that of cross-border terror.
In Ramallah, Israeli soldiers yesterday shot dead a 95-year-old Palestinian woman who was taking a taxi home after a medical check-up in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian witnesses and medics said.
They said troops opened fire on the van the woman was traveling in when it tried to bypass rubble that Israeli forces had used to block the road between Ramallah and her home village of Atara.
Israeli military sources said soldiers shot at the tires of a Palestinian vehicle traveling on a prohibited road north of Ramallah after it ignored calls to halt. The sources said they did not know of any injured or dead.
Medics said the woman, Fatima Hassan, who was on her way home from a medical clinic, was hit by a bullet in the back and that two other people in the taxi were wounded, one of them critically.
“We condemn this war crime of killing in cold blood a 95-year-old woman and we hold Israel fully responsible,” Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told Reuters.
The Israeli Army, meanwhile, arrested 12 Palestinians across the West Bank yesterday. The arrests overnight of alleged members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad and an armed group linked to President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction followed a day of violence on Monday in which four Palestinians were killed.
The army said the suspects were rounded up in the Bethlehem, Hebron and Nablus areas, which are among the major Palestinian-ruled cities and towns reoccupied by Israeli forces.
Meanwhile, UN employees working in the West Bank and Gaza Strip denounced the Nov. 22 killing of colleague Iain Hook by the Israeli Army in Jenin and its violence toward UN staff, in a petition received by AFP yesterday.
“Based on publicly available information, we condemn the Israeli Army in the strongest possible terms for its wanton act against an unarmed man, a man shot in the back by a military sniper,” read the petition, the first of its kind since the 26-month-old Palestinian uprising began.
