The government will put a brake on Jewish settlement in Hebron. Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Zipori who vis-
ited the West Bank town today said that for the time being there will be no more settlements there. His statement came on the heels of protests by local Arabs that Jews were continuing to occupy property despite a Cabinet decision to the contrary.
The Cabinet agreed to halt all settlement work in Hebron pending a debate on the issue by the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee demanded by Deputy Premier Yigael Yadin. But acting Mayor Mustafa Abdul Nabi Natshe complained to the Military Governor, Manoah Zehavi yesterday that surveyors were working in the old Hebron market place. Premier Menachem Begin said this week that he “did not know” of such work.
Jewish settlement in Hebron began two years ago when a group of women and children from neighboring Kiryat Arba, a Gush Emunim strong-hold, took over a building in the heart of the Arab town that had once served as a Hadassah center. The squatters ignored government orders to evacuate the site and the government eventually acquiesced to the take-over.
More recently, two other buildings in Hebron were occupied by Kiryat Arba families on grounds that they had always been owned by Jews. One was unoccupied and the other was taken over when the lease of its Arab occupants expired. According to Military Government sources compensation was paid to the Arabs.
Meanwhile, Natshe appealed to the Supreme Court today for an interim order to ban his expulsion from the West Bank. He said that he and members of the town council were summoned to the Military Governor this week and warned that if they organized a commercial strike to protest Jewish settlement or held a press conference they might find themselves “outside the municipality and perhaps even further away.”
Natshe has been acting Mayor since Mayor Fahd Kawasme of Hebron was deported a year ago following the ambush slaying of six yeshiva students in Hebron. He told the Supreme Court that he feared he, too, might be deported “at any moment.”
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