The New York Times · 5 December 1997

CP-1997-032

In West Bank, ‘Time’ for Settlements Is Clearly Not ‘Out’

By SERGE SCHMEMANN

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Transcribed from the clipping

OFRA, West Bank, Dec. 4 — If there is any serious talk of a “time-out” in settlement construction, it sure hasn’t reached Ofra. On one hillside, 27 houses stand in various stages of completion, while bulldozers shift boulders on another hill to make room for 24 more. Outside their settlement, Ofra residents have moved mobile homes onto another hilltop.

Despite a national strike that paralyzed all such work elsewhere in Israel, private electricians were busy stringing wire to the outpost. Similar activity can be seen in many other settlements, where construction that was frozen under the former Labor Government has resumed under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.

According to Peace Now, a left-wing Israeli organization that closely monitors settlement activity, 4,714 housing units are now under construction in 61 of the 140 West Bank settlements.

The organization also said the Government had put out tenders for the construction of 26 housing units in a small Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, marking the first construction there since the last Likud Government in 1992.

“Time out?” declared Yona Hoffman, the head of the 1,860-member Jewish settlement five miles northeast of Ramallah, as talk turned to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright’s suggestion that Israel take a pause in settlement construction to break the deadlock in peace negotiations with the Palestinians. “It would be a disaster!

Let her freeze construction in her own United States. I sure hope if she demands this, that Bibi will give a good answer.” “Bibi” — Mr. Netanyahu — is to meet Ms. Albright on Friday in Paris, where she is likely to press him for progress on the requirements Washington has laid out for resuming the peace talks.

They include a “significant and credible” further withdrawal in the West Bank and a timeout in settlement expansion.

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