Netanyahu: Settlement freeze ‘unreasonable’

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dismissing US calls for a West Bank settlement freeze as unreasonable.

Officials say Netanyahu delivered his assessment to a closed parliamentary committee yesterday.

The US has demanded that Israel halt all construction in the settlements. Netanyahu says some building must continue to accommodate what he calls “natural growth”.

A meeting participant says Netanyahu testified that Israel cannot “freeze life” in existing settlements. He said “there are reasonable requests and unreasonable requests”.

Another participant says Netanyahu said his job is to protect Israel, even if his decisions are not popular.

The participants spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.

Meanwhile, mobs of Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the West Bank yesterday, attacking Palestinian labourers and setting fire to agricultural land to protest against an Israeli government crackdown on unauthorised outposts in the territory.

Six Palestinian labourers riding on a minivan were injured when stone-throwing settlers attacked them, the workers said.

The violence comes as the Obama administration is pressuring Israel to honour long-standing pledges to tear down wildcat settlement outposts in the West Bank and to freeze expansion in existing, government-sanctioned settlements.

Netanyahu faces stiff resistance within his hardline government against taking down about two dozen of the outposts. The disagreement has caused a rift between the allies.

It has also put Jewish settlers and their backers in the Israeli government on the defensive.

Yesterday’s violence was all deep inside the West Bank, where most of the hardline settlements are located.

It started on Sunday night near the radical settlement of Yizhar, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. About 100 settlers blocked a road to protest against Israel’s recent removal of a handful of tiny, uninhabited outposts. Six settlers were later arrested there.

Settler activist Daniella Weiss, who lives in the area, said she was unaware of the violence. But she vowed that Jewish residents would resist any attempts to move them, “no matter how harsh the policy of the Israeli government will be against us”.

“The policy of dismantling outposts is an opening phase for withdrawal,” she said.

Nearly 300,000 Israelis live in the settlements among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. Another 180,000 live in Jewish neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem. The Palestinians claim both areas – captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war – as parts of a future independent state.

The US considers the settlements an obstacle to peace, but traditionally has done little on the issue, a policy that appears to be changing under President Barack Obama.

The rampage underscored the difficulties Netanyahu faces. On one hand, he is wary of picking a fight with the US, his most important ally. But settlers have a vocal leadership with many allies inside Netanyahu’s government, constraining his ability to take action.