Jewish settlers build new outposts

 

swissinfo  




June 15, 2003 12:15 PM

 

Jewish settlers build new outposts

 

By Corinne Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Jewish settlers have quietly set up five new outposts in the West Bank since Israel began dismantling such sites

last week under a U.S.-backed "road map" to peace, an Israeli monitoring group says.

The planting of more caravans and tents on lonely hilltops has been overshadowed by the deaths of more than 50 people in a week of

Israeli-Palestinian violence that has battered the peace plan affirmed at a June 4 summit in Aqaba, Jordan.

"(Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon wasn't serious when he said at the Aqaba summit that he would dismantle outposts," said Yariv

Oppenheimer of Israel's Peace Now group, which opposes settlements on land seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

The group, which monitors settlement activity, said only one of the five new outposts, at Neve Tsuf near the West Bank city of Ramallah, was

inhabited. It was set up near the spot where Palestinian gunmen wounded two Israeli women on Friday.

Like dozens of other small outposts that have sprouted over the years to extend the reach of established settlements, the five have not been

authorised by the Israeli government.

"The way it looks now, the people in charge of these areas are the settlers and no one, not even the Israeli government, is stopping them,"

Oppenheimer said.

The international community views all Jewish settlements on occupied territory as illegal. Israel disputes this, and settlers maintain they have

a biblical right to the land.

Sharon pledged at the Aqaba talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. President George W. Bush to dismantle

unauthorised outposts, one of the reciprocal confidence-building steps charted by the peace plan.

Last week, the Israeli army uprooted 10 unauthorised outposts, none of them inhabited. Palestinian officials dismissed their scrapping as a

cosmetic move.

An Israeli Defence Ministry spokeswoman said there were plans to "dismantle some other isolated outposts soon" but no decision has

been made as to when and where.

Ezra Rosenfeld, spokesman for YESHA, the umbrella group representing the 200,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,

declined to comment on the new outposts.

But he vowed: "For every outpost that is dismantled, we will set up two new ones."

 

 

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