Jewish settlers to expand West Bank community in defiant answer to attack
September 03, 2002, 09:56 AM
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Jewish settlers are to lay the first stone of a new neighbourhood of a settlement in the northern West Bank in defiant response to a Palestinan attack at the weekend, Israeli public radio said.
"We will lay the first stone of a new neighborhood with 25 houses; this will be a Zionist answer to Saturday's terrorist attack," when two settlers were wounded, Shlomi Wallerstein, a community official, told the radio.
The Palestinian assailant, who broke into the Har Brakha settlement on Saturday night, was shot dead by soldiers.
The shootout was claimed by the secular Popular Front for the Liberation Palestinian (PFLP).
"The first prefab house will be installed in two weeks' time and the whole new neighborhood, which will temporarily host religious students, should be completed within three months," Wallerstein added.
Israel's Peace Now movement said Monday that eight new illegal settlement outposts were created over the past month in the West Bank.
"At a time when many settlers wish to leave their homes, a small radical minority keeps on building while the government turns a blind eye," said the peace group.
Israel's Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer recently announced his intention to dismantle some 20 illegal outposts in the West bank.
But according to the public radio, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked him not to give his green light to such removals before the government discusses and agrees on the matter.
Peace Now said that despite Ben Eliezer's pledge, not a single inhabited settlement had yet been dismantled.
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