The New York Times · 25 July 1972

CP-1972-027

Israel Intensifying Settlement of Seized Territories

By PETER GROSE

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, July 24—The Government of Israel is quietly intensifying the establishment of new settlements in the lands captured from the Arab countries in the 1967 war.

Israel Galili, one of Premier Golda Meir’s most influential confidants, made a brief statement to this effect in the parliament last week, but it was little noticed amid the intense discussions here and abroad of Cairo’s moves to reduce the Soviet presence in Egypt. “Israel will leave no vacuum in these areas,” said Mr.

Galili, who holds the title Minister Without Portfolio. “No area is out of bounds to Jewish settlement.” Then, apparently in an attempt to deflect charges that he was proclaiming the policy of “expansionism” that the Arab countries have asserted Israel pursues, Mr.

Galili said that Jewish settlement would be limited by the “sensibilities and needs of the local inhabitants”— meaning Arabs— and that other “national needs” of Israel often took higher priority than establishing Jewish settlements.

The minister disclosed that 44 new communities for Israeli settlers had been founded since the 1967 war in the occupied territories, the last one only three weeks ago. Fifteen of these are on the Golan heights, captured from Syria, 15 are on the West Bank of the Jordan River, and 14 are in Sinai and the Gaza Strip, formerly administered by Egypt.

Israel’s ambiguous policy on settlement has been criticized inside and outside Israel since the first weeks after the war ended. Arabs and many foreign officials and commentators have challenged Israel’s right to settle in these captured territories at all on the ground that, at the least, settlement precludes eventual withdrawal.

More recently, the hard-line Opposition parties in Israel have become more vocal in criticizing Mrs. Meir’s Government for failure to establish settlements in the new territories quickly enough. It was in response to a motion from the Opposition that Mr. Galili made his remarks in parliament.

The Opposition Gahal bloc is strongly opposed to any withdrawal and fears that the Government is holding open the possibility of an eventual pullback.

Military and civilian authorities usually say that the new Israeli settlements fall into three categories: Those like East Jerusalem and Sharm el Sheik, at the southern end of the Sinai Peninsula, which the Government says openly will not be relinquished even after a peace treaty is negotiated.

Settlements such as the Orthodox Jewish religious community in the West Bank city of Hebron, where Israel expects Jews to live permanently, if necessary as foreign residents if sovereignty is returned to an Arab government.

Exclusively military settlements, to assist in border security as long as Israel holds the present cease-fire lines but which presumably could be abandoned in the event of a negotiated withdrawal. The ambiguity—and officials concede that it is deliberate — is that no Government spokesman has ever designated into which of the categories each settlement is placed.

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