Barak Gets Approval to Uproot Settlers

Prime Minister Ehud Barak secured Cabinet-level approval to uproot rogue Jewish settlements in the West Bank, political officials said in Jerusalem. The decision clears the way for Barak to determine the fate of 42 stronghold outposts, many set up over the past year in a settler push to create new “facts on the ground” ahead of talks on the settlement issue. But the Palestinian Authority said that even Israeli eviction of settlers from newly occupied sites in the West Bank would ignore the bedrock Palestinian contention that all Jewish settlements are illegal and must be removed under a final peace.