Rabin Tells Rightists He Won’t Remove Settlers : Israel: But premier appears to leave open possibility of evacuating Hebron’s 415 Jews in the future.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told opposition leaders Friday that his government has no intention of evacuating Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank town of Hebron, a key Palestinian demand after the Feb. 25 massacre of about 30 Arab worshipers in Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs.

In a meeting meant to diffuse a torrent of criticism from Israel’s political right of Thursday’s unprecedented agreement to permit armed, international observers in Hebron, the prime minister stressed that “at this stage” of peace negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, the government has dropped the issue of Hebron’s settlers from the agenda, according to opposition leaders and Rabin’s aides.

That wording appeared to leave open the possibility of removing the 415 settlers in the future.

Rabin’s assurance, which met with mixed reviews from Israel’s political right, came as the potentially explosive issue began to tear into the state’s very foundations. Senior Israeli officials indicated Friday that the government’s decision to permit foreign troops in the occupied lands for the first time in a quarter of a century was not only a compromise to persuade the PLO to return to talks on permanent Palestinian autonomy, but also an attempt to compromise on an internal Israeli debate on the settlements issue.

One member of Rabin’s government publicly linked the two issues Friday. In an interview on Israel Radio, Economics Minister Shimon Shetreet declared that he hopes the agreement to permit the armed observer force will end the debate over the settlers.

“I hope that the fact that there are international observers, that all those who suggest moving out the Jewish residents of Hebron will stop talking about it,” said Shetreet, who is considered one of the most conservative members of Rabin’s Cabinet.

“This is enough,” he said.

After Brooklyn-born physician Baruch Goldstein’s attack on praying Palestinians in the mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the PLO demanded that the government remove the settlers from Hebron.

Reports followed that the government was weighing plans either to evacuate or consolidate the handful of small settlements in the heart of a city with more than 100,000 angry Palestinians--a situation that Rabin had called “a potential time bomb.”

The political opposition warned that such action against the settlers, who assert that their right to live on land that Israel occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War is grounded in the biblical references to Hebron as the first Israelite community in Canaan, could polarize the nation.

Debate over the issue took a dire turn Wednesday when a right-wing religious party, the National Religious Party, released a ruling by three influential rabbis instructing Israeli soldiers to disobey any direct order to forcibly remove Jews from Hebron.

Rabin’s response to the rabbinical ruling was swift and angry. In a news conference Thursday night, he called it “irresponsibility unprecedented since the creation of the state of Israel.”

Senior military commanders, leaders of Rabin’s Labor Party and members of his leftist coalition government sought to isolate the rabbis and the religious party that follows their rulings.

Labor Party General Secretary Nissim Zvili called the three religious leaders, among them one of Israel’s former chief rabbis, “an example of rabbis who have lost their way. They are extremists who are led by unbalanced marginal forces, and their rulings could result in civil war.”

But the government clearly was concerned about the implications of their ruling at a time when it is involved in delicate negotiations with a former sworn enemy.

Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Gur met with one of the rabbis, former Israeli Chief Rabbi Avraham Shapira, in an unsuccessful effort to get him to withdraw it.

“I wanted to make clear to him the potential dangers and possible consequences of a call to a soldier to disobey orders . . . a decision that could bring about the collapse of Israeli society,” Gur said after meeting with Shapira on Thursday.

A poll published by the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot on Friday found that 81% of Israeli citizens interviewed said they would disapprove if Israeli soldiers obeyed the rabbis and refused direct orders from their commanders to remove the settlers. But the question put another way yielded a partially contradictory result: One in five Israelis would endorse military disobedience based on religious commands.

Several right-wing opposition leaders also appeared to endorse the rabbinical decision. And it was praised by many speakers at a rally Thursday of thousands of settlers celebrating the 26-year-old Hebron settlements, which revived a Jewish community that had fled after 67 Jews were massacred there in a series of Arab uprisings in 1929.

The settlers’ demonstration took place at Kiryat Arba, which was home to Goldstein. Some of the settlers who spoke at the rally praised the man who had fired more than 100 bullets into the crowded Ibrahim Mosque inside the traditional burial place of Abraham.

It was against that backdrop that Rabin’s government agreed Thursday to the international observer force as a concession to the PLO. In exchange, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat appeared to drop his demand that the Jewish settlers be removed from Hebron immediately.

It remained unclear after Rabin’s meeting with the opposition Friday whether the Israeli-PLO agreement, which had triggered another round of angry condemnations from the political right on Thursday, would end the debate over the rabbinical ruling.