Скачать или смотреть MIDDLE EAST: JEWISH SETTLEMENTS ISSUES

(2 Nov 1999) Hebrew/Eng/Nat

While U-S, Israeli and Palestinian leaders attended the memorial summit in Oslo, Norway, for the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli members of the left wing movement Peace Now visited Mitzpeh Kramim, one of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, scheduled to be evacuated during the next few weeks.

To their surprise, not only was the settlement still occupied but new construction work was underway and five new caravans had been placed on a hill nearby.

The issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been one of the most contentious in the whole Middle East peace process.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had promised that some of the 42 settlements that were started immediately after last May's general election would be evacuated.

It was to hold the Israeli government to that commitment that members of Peace Now travelled to Kramim, near the West Bank town of Ramallah, and site of one of the 12 settlements to be closed down.

When they arrived, they discovered that far from plans being made to close the settlement, it was actually being expanded to a nearby hill the settlers called Mitzpeh Kramim.

A spokesman for Peace Now accused the settlers of bad faith.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"No, no, they don't deliver the goods. They didn't evacuate up to now, even not one populated outpost. Three weeks past they said they are going to evacuate in a week all the outposts. They don't deliver the goods and that's why the government should evacuate all of them."
SUPER CAPTION: Mossi Raz, Peace Now Spokesman

The settlers said the demonstrators were wrong, and that they fully intended to continue building at Mitzpeh Kramim.

One settler said it wasn't certain that they would have to move.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We're still negotiating, and I believe we'll be able to find a way to stay here, and you'll be able to come and visit us when the place is built with not only caravans but nice houses, and stone houses."
SUPER CAPTION: Jewish settler

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has said he will ask the United States to force Israel to slow down or freeze new settlements.

Although the United States has called the continued building of settlements in the occupied territories "destructive" to the peace process, it has not publicly reprimanded Barak for approving new homes at a faster pace than his hard-line predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.

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