RAMALLAH: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out a settlement freeze in Palestinian territories and called the US demand for halting construction as unreasonable, while mobs of Jewish occupiers attacked Palestinians and burned West Bank fields yesterday.
Netanyahu assured the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Israel “will not to freeze life in West Bank” despite intense pressure from the Obama administration to do so.
Six Palestinians were injured in the stone-throwing attacks, meant to protest the removal of settler squatter camps by the Netanyahu government.
Yesterday’s events highlighted Netanyahu’s increasingly difficult balancing act. The hard-line leader is trying to keep his pro-occupier ruling coalition together by rejecting President Barack Obama’s call for a halt to all settlement activity, at the risk of hurting Israel’s all-important relationship with the US.
In an apparent gesture to Obama, Netanyahu has begun dismantling small settler outposts built without formal government authorization. But even that limited step risks triggering occupiers’ violence against Palestinians and further international criticism of Israel.
Occupiers have vowed to respond with attacks on Palestinians and their property to any attempt to remove even the tiniest enclave - a tactic known as “price tag.” “We will do everything we can to oppose this,” said Yehuda Shimon, a resident of the Havat Gilad outpost in the northern West Bank.
In Jerusalem, Netanyahu briefed the Israeli Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee about his recent meeting with Obama at the White House. The American president and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, have demanded that Israel halt all settlement construction, including expansion to accommodate what Israel calls “natural growth” of settler communities.
Netanyahu said Israel cannot “freeze life” in settlements, according to a participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.
Netanyahu was quoted as saying that “there are reasonable requests and unreasonable requests.” Yesterday’s occupiers’ violence started near the radical settlement of Yizhar, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. About 100 occupiers blocked a road to protest Israel’s recent removal of a handful of tiny, uninhabited outposts.
Six occupiers were later arrested.
Before dawn, near the Kedumim settlement, stone-throwing settlers ambushed a minivan carrying Palestinian laborers to Israel, the workers said. Six of the 15 Palestinians on board were hurt, including Yahye Sadah, 44, who was hit in the head and said he got six stitches.
Police said occupiers threw rocks and burned tires in the area. The attackers fled and no arrests were made, they said.
A few hours later, occupiers torched a wooded hilltop near Nablus and set trees and Palestinian agricultural land on fire near the village of Hawara, residents said. Romel Sweiti, a Hawara resident, said about 50 teenage settler girls gathered on a main road and blocked traffic as Israeli paramilitary police stood in the background.
Nearly 300,000 Israelis live in the settlements among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. Another 180,000 live in Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem.
Israel has failed to keep a promise to the US, first made in 2003, to dismantle about two-dozen outposts. The US considers the settlements an obstacle to peace, but traditionally has done little on the issue, a policy that appears to be changing under Obama.
