Peace talks threatened as move to Hebron allowed
JEWISH SETTLERS ENTER CONTESTED AREA Defence minister’s decision ‘undermines U.S. and international efforts’ in negotiation
HEBRON, WEST BANK — Israel has been accused of trying to sabotage efforts to rescue peace talks after giving Jewish settlers the go-ahead to set up home in one of the most volatile parts of the occupied West Bank.
The charge came after three families moved Sunday into a fourstorey building in the outskirts of Hebron — a region notorious for confrontations between Israeli settlers and its 185,000 Palestinian residents.
Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli soldiers opposed to the military occupation of the West Bank, said it was the first new settlement development to be approved in the city in 30 years.
The settlers assumed residency under the guard of heavily armed soldiers after Moshe Ya’alon, the Israeli defence minister, approved their return more than five years after they were evicted following a legal dispute over the building’s ownership.
Ya’alon’s approval provoked warnings of fresh violence and allegations he was trying to prevent an extension of U.S.-brokered negotiations that are to expire April 29.
About 25 families eventually are expected to inhabit the building, which sits between a mosque and a Palestinian cemetery close to the neighbouring Kiryat Arba settlement.
David Wilder, a spokesman for Hebron’s 850-strong settler community, said Ya’alon’s decision was “a milestone” that would pave the way for Israelis to buy and occupy more buildings in the city.
“If it helps torpedo the negotiations, I’m all for it,” he said, adding that Israeli annexation of the West Bank — seen by the Palestinians as part of a future state — was “inevitable.”
Ya’alon’s decision “undermines U.S. and international efforts and reaffirms that there is no sense in extending negotiations without a full cessation of Israeli settlement activities,” former Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Ishtayyeh said.