Netanyahu urges Israel to build more settlements


Reuters
 Date: 08-31-05

MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank (Reuters) - Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu launched his campaign to oust Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday with a call for settlement building that could lead to a showdown with Israel's U.S. ally. Staking out the battleground for the right-wing power struggle triggered by Sharon's removal of settlers from occupied Gaza, Netanyahu urged immediate construction on a particularly sensitive West Bank area outside East Jerusalem.

"The time has come to build here and I will build here," Netanyahu told reporters on a tour of the rocky hillside between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, the biggest West Bank settlement.

Sharon himself plans construction in the so-called E1 area despite heavy U.S. criticism and fury from the Palestinians, who say they would be cut off from the holy city they seek as the capital of an eventual state.

The plans call for construction of 1,000 housing units and later, a tunnel to divert Palestinian traffic. Israel has not yet approved any building at the site, but recently cleared construction of a police station there.

Netanyahu declared his challenge to Sharon for leadership of the ruling Likud party on Tuesday, a step that could lead to elections earlier than the due date of November 2006 and is likely to keep any peacemaking with the Palestinians on hold.

Sharon's plan to end Israel's 38-year presence in Gaza, as a way to reduce conflict with the Palestinians, moved a step nearer completion as parliament approved an Egyptian deployment in a border zone. Netanyahu voted against.

SPLIT

The 55-year-old former prime minister, who resigned as Sharon's finance minister over the Gaza plan, is the darling of rightists opposed to yielding any settlements in Israeli-occupied territory that Palestinians want for a state.

They fear the removal of 9,000 settlers from Gaza and a corner of the West Bank, finished last week, sets a precedent for giving up homes on land to which settlers say they have a Biblical claim and that it rewards a Palestinian uprising.

There are 30 times as many settlers in the West Bank as there were in Gaza. The World Court has ruled all the settlements illegal. Israel disputes this.

Likud polls show Netanyahu would rout Sharon in a primary if it were held soon, but Sharon has far greater support for prime minister across the country -- stirring speculation he could break away to form a new centrist party.

A poll in Yedioth Ahronoth daily said 54 percent of Israelis preferred Sharon. Only 26 percent wanted Netanyahu.

Sharon, 77, once godfather of the settler movement, has vowed Israel will never give up its biggest West Bank settlement blocs, but that some isolated enclaves could go under an eventual peace deal with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu said the Gaza pullout had paved the way for pullbacks that could include Jerusalem, which Israel says is its undivided capital, a claim not recognised internationally.

Palestinians want Arab East Jerusalem, captured with Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 war, for the capital of a state.

"We have seen on the hills that not a single home is being built by Israelis. The Palestinians have started building many houses," Netanyahu said in Maale Adumim. "That is something that will change when we return the real Likud to power."

He appeared to echo a call Sharon once made for settlers to seize "every hilltop" and dismissed Israel's promise to freeze settlement construction under a U.S.-inspired peace "road map".

Israel has failed to meet that pledge, while Palestinians have not met a commitment to start dismantling militant groups.

In Jerusalem, Israel's parliament voted 53-28 to approve a deal for 750 Egyptian police to secure a portion of the Gaza border against arms smuggling to militants once Israel completes a pullout from the seaside strip.

Source

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