The New York Times · New York, New York · 27 November 1996

CP-1996-022

Netanyahu, Scorning Critics, Visits West Bank Settlement

By Serge Schmemann

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, Nov. 26 — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid his first official visit to Jewish settlements in the West Bank today, adding new fuel to steadily rising tensions with the Palestinians. While the Prime Minister’s visit in itself was not unusual, since Labor Government leaders had also visited the settlements and the settlers are part of Mr.

Netanyahu’s right-wing constituency, it came after a tense confrontation around a settlement in the Gaza Strip, and against a steady drumbeat of recriminations over the deadlock in the talks over the future of the West Bank city of Hebron. Greeted by schoolchildren in the large settlement of Ariel, and by chanting religion students in nearby Eli, Mr.

Netanyahu issued a combative retort to critics of the settlements at home and abroad. “A government was elected which says it will maintain communities in Judea and Samaria, and the Prime Minister shouldn’t visit these communities?” he asked rhetorically, using the biblical terms for the West Bank.

“What, don’t you understand that there were elections in Israel? The Arab world doesn’t understand that there were elections in Israel? “And why shouldn’t settlements develop here?” he continued. “Is somebody stopping the development of the Arab communities nearby? Am I preventing that? Am I choking them?

Am I telling them don’t build houses, don’t build schools?” The statement won predictable plaudits from the settlers, who have been increasingly restive in the first months of Mr. Netanyahu’s administration as he appeared reluctant to approve a major new settlement drive and, in recent weeks, concentrated on negotiating an Israeli withdrawal from Hebron.

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Context added by this archive

Date check: The running head reads THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEDNESDAY, NOVE… — the rest of the date runs off the right edge of the scan. The dateline reads “JERUSALEM, Nov. 26”, and November 27, 1996 was a Wednesday, so the slide date is consistent with what is legible, but the printed date is only partly visible.

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