Israel Boosts West Bank Settlements

In response to the killing of a Jewish settler and her son, the Israeli government on Friday renewed its claim to the occupied West Bank, declaring the Jewish communities there a “national priority” and offering economic aid to strengthen them.

The Cabinet decision--a shift by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a more aggressive settlement policy--was denounced by Palestinians, Israeli peace activists and the political opposition as an invitation to bloodshed.

Netanyahu rejected an appeal by some government ministers and the widowed father to go further and offer what they called a true Zionist response to the murders--construction of 1,000 new houses in the West Bank. The right-wing Likud leader said that the time was not right for building and that such a move would mean “canceling the peace process.”

But the Palestinians viewed Israel’s decision to resume the social benefits and financial incentives to Israeli settlers that had been suspended by the previous, Labor government as an equally grave change.

“The Israeli decision is a declaration of war against the Palestinian people,” Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority said in a statement. “It threatens to undermine what remains of the peace process.”

Ahmed Korei, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, called on Palestinians to “prepare themselves to confront settlement activities” in the West Bank.

“Since they consider settlement expansion is legal, we consider confrontation and fighting against settlement is legal,” Korei, an author of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, told Israeli television.

Soon afterward, the Israeli military announced that several Katyusha rockets had landed in the western Galilee region in what Israel Radio speculated might be a related attack.

No one was wounded in the attack, the first of its kind since Israel’s “Grapes of Wrath” offensive in southern Lebanon ended in April with an understanding with the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah to halt firing.

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The military reportedly was trying to determine whether the fire came from Hezbollah, which is fighting to oust Israel from southern Lebanon, or possibly from Palestinians groups in Lebanon opposed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.

One of those groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, claimed responsibility for the drive-by shooting near the settlement of Beit El on Wednesday that took the lives of Etta Tzur and her son Ephraim.

PFLP leader George Habash promised more violence in a statement that he issued from Syria.

In the Israeli Cabinet communique on Friday, the Netanyahu government demanded that the Palestinian Authority apprehend the Tzurs’ killers and extradite them to Israel.

The extradition issue is likely to become “a real tug of war,” between Netanyahu and Arafat, a senior U.S. official predicted.

“If they make it a real test, there is going to be a prolonged standoff,” the official said.

The communique also announced the designation of Judea and Samaria--the biblical name for the West Bank and a term preferred by settlers--as an “A” level national priority on par with the Galilee, Golan Heights, Jordan Valley and development towns inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

As residents of a national priority area, settlers will be entitled to tax breaks, student grants, funds for child-care centers, assistance for business and industry, and aid for teachers and social workers in the settlements.

The Cabinet statement said the benefits will take effect after a ministerial committee headed by Netanyahu works out the details.

But Army Radio said Finance Minister Dan Meridor, who on Monday pushed through the Cabinet a plan to cut state spending by $1.9 billion next year, had demanded to know how the government would pay for the benefits.

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In offering benefits, the Netanyahu government is providing incentives to Jews who move to the West Bank. Previously, the stated policy was to allow “natural growth” in the settlements but not to actively encourage it.

Netanyahu had already announced the sale of 3,000 West Bank apartments that the Labor government froze during negotiations with the Palestinians.

The Israeli government has also approved the construction of 3,000 new units in the West Bank settlements of Emmanuel and Kiryat Sefer.

The Israeli government had planned to change the West Bank settlements’ status even before the killings to “remove discrimination” against settlers, said David Bar-Illan, a government spokesman.

“Anyplace that is not a metropolitan area gets this. There are some places the government feels should attract population and others we don’t,” Bar-Illan said.

He sought to preemptively blame the Palestinians for any violence that might result from the new policy, saying the Palestinians have been planning riots and disturbances in the West Bank for weeks.

“They are looking for an excuse. Whether this will provide an excuse, as the tunnel did, I don’t know,” he said.

Israel opened a new door to the Hasmonean tunnel near Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City last September, sparking Palestinian riots that led to combat between Palestinian police and Israeli soldiers. The riots left at least 75 dead and about 1,000 injured.

The confrontation led to a summit between Netanyahu and Arafat and a promise to get the stalled peace negotiations back on track.

But the two sides have been unable to agree on the terms for an Israeli troop redeployment from the West Bank city of Hebron that has been delayed since a wave of Islamic suicide bombings killed more than 60 people in Israel last February and March.

Netanyahu and a right-wing religious coalition ousted the Labor government in May elections, and relations between Israel and the Arab world have deteriorated over the lack of progress in negotiations with the Palestinians.

Egypt, Israel’s oldest peace partner, has said that Netanyahu’s settlement policy threatens regional peace.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns described the Israeli Cabinet statement as “troubling. . . . As I said before many times, settlement activity is unhelpful and . . . clearly complicates the peace process.”