Israel OKs Transfer of 5% of W. Bank to Arabs

Hours after Israeli troops evicted dozens of kicking, shouting Jewish settlers from an illegal outpost in the West Bank, the Cabinet took further steps along the road to peace Wednesday by overwhelmingly approving the transfer of an additional 5% of the territory’s land to the Palestinians.

The dual actions by the government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak drew mild praise from Palestinian officials and predictable anger from Israeli hard-liners, including a few politicians and some settler leaders.

But there also appeared to be broad backing in Israel, and even surprising political support, for Barak’s decision to send hundreds of soldiers and police before dawn Wednesday to clear out the Havat Maon encampment in the Hebron hills south of Jerusalem. Despite the political and emotional sensitivity involved in sending Jewish troops to confront Jewish settlers, Barak had no choice, many said.

Havat Maon was the last of 12 illegal outposts to be evacuated in a deal between the government and mainstream settler leaders. A young, extreme group of settlers had tried to turn it into a symbol of defiance of the government’s land-for-peace pacts with the Palestinians.

“This was a clear-cut case of people taking the law into their own hands, which is something we cannot accept,” said Danny Naveh, a legislator from the opposition Likud Party and a strong supporter of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. “They did not leave any choice for the government.”

The struggle over the tiny settlement was viewed by many here as a test of wills between the Barak government and an emerging, far-right fringe of the settler movement, which hopes to prevent the transfer of any more land to the Palestinians and is willing to bend or break the law to do so.

Some politicians and analysts said Barak, who acted after repeated warnings to the young settlers, demonstrated both patience and firmness, showing that he will negotiate with political opponents but will not back down once difficult decisions are made.

“He also demonstrated to the Palestinians that his government is willing to confront some of the more extreme elements in Israeli society,” said Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political studies at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University.

But Palestinian officials, who have watched from the sidelines as Israelis engage in furious debate over the outposts, appeared underwhelmed by Wednesday’s eviction. Several noted that Barak’s government may have cleared several tiny enclaves but that construction, by all accounts, is booming in many established settlements in the West Bank.

“To remove caravans [trailers] in Maon but, at the same time, to give tenders for the construction of thousands of housing units all over the West Bank is something that we see as very serious,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Wednesday. “What is required is the removal of all the settlements. To do otherwise is destructive to the peace process.”

The Palestinians, and most of the international community, regard settlements on occupied land as illegal. The United States has described the communities as “destructive” to the peace process and “obstacles” to negotiations, launched this week, that are aimed at producing a final peace treaty by September.

The eviction was followed by the Cabinet’s 17-1 vote to approve another Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank, which is scheduled to be carried out Monday. In the redeployment, 2% of the territory will be transferred from joint Israeli-Palestinian control to sole Palestinian authority and 3% will be changed from sole Israeli control to joint authority. The land transfer is the second of three hand-overs agreed upon in an interim peace accord signed in September.

At Havat Maon, meanwhile, army officials pronounced themselves satisfied with the operation, saying it went off relatively smoothly. Four minor injuries were reported among the settlers, and about 50 people were detained for trying to disrupt the evictions and subsequent dismantling of the outpost’s trailers and makeshift buildings. All those detained were released by day’s end.

Yet the eviction was clearly painful for many on each side.

At one point early Wednesday, a teenage settler, forced onto a waiting bus with others to be evacuated, begged several soldiers to let him off for a few minutes to join a nearby group in morning prayers. Seeing the boy’s distress, a young woman screamed at the troops. “It’s like the Holocaust, when they got all the Jews on the trains!” she yelled. “Look at yourselves! You’re Jews?”

But another man, wearing the coveralls of a member of the security forces and the kippa of a devout Jew, briefly interrupted his own prayers to reproach the woman. “It’s not the same thing,” he reproved her. “You should not compare this.”

Maj. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the commander of the operation, said many of the 1,000 soldiers and police who took part had received psychological counseling to prepare them for the difficult task and for the insults and appeals that would be hurled their way.

“We are trained to fight in battle against enemies, not against Jews--either settlers or other Jews,” said Yaalon, chief of the army’s central command in the West Bank. “So it is, of course, a difficult mission.”

Shouting “Barbarians!” and “Arafat would be proud of you!”--a reference to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat--many of the settlers had to be dragged or carried to the buses.