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Israeli Leader Congratulates Jewish Settlers of Palestinian Lands
JERUSALEM (AFP)-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak sent a message of good wishes Friday to Jewish settlers residing in the West Bank city of Hebron on the 32nd anniversary of their move there.
Barak stressed "Jews' right to live in security, protected from any attack, in the city of the Patriarchs," according to a copy of his message passed on by the town settlers' committee.
"That said, the test for the reborn Jewish community and the Arab majority will be in their ability to establish good neighborly ties and mutual respect," the head of the Labor Party government said.
"We want to believe that the establishment of peaceful relations between you and our Palestinian neighbors in the West Bank and Gaza will create the foundation for such ties between the Jewish community and its Arab neighbors" in Hebron, he added.
Extremist settler spokesperson Noam Arnon welcomed the message, saying it "conveyed the support extended by all the successive Israeli governments to the Jewish settlement in Hebron."
"In raising Jews' right to live in security in Hebron, Barak implicitly commits himself to maintaining Israeli control over the section of Hebron" where the settlers live, he said.
From the other end of the Israeli political spectrum, the Peace Now movement issued a statement criticizing Barak.
"Barak received a mandate from the voters to make peace, not to strengthen those who are an obstacle to it." There is "a core of Jewish settlers who have proved time and again that they reject co-existence" in the 120,000-strong city of Hebron, Peace Now said.
Barak's office refused to comment, saying it had not taken the initiative to publish the letter, whatever that means.
Israeli settlers began moving into Hebron in spring 1968, saying they came to celebrate Passover in the city, which was then entirely under Israeli control. A Palestinian rented out his hotel to them, and the American Jews, led by fanatic Moshe Levinger, stayed.
Hebron's early Jewish settlers fled in the early 1930s after Palestinians massacred 69 Jews there. In 1994, an extremist Jew killed 29 Muslims at Fajr prayers in Ramadan in Hebron's Haram Ibrahimi, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews.
Israel withdrew from four-fifths of Hebron in 1997 as part of an agreement with the Palestinians. Israel remains in control of the important part of the city, the center part that houses the Old City and Haram Ibrahimi, where more than 400 Jews live.
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