Plans to Build Jewish Suburb Next to Hebron Assailed by Left Praised by Right

Plans to build a Jewish suburb next to the West Bank Arab town of Hebron were disclosed by Deputy Premier Yigal Allon in the Knesset yesterday. They immediately raised a controversy between right-wing MKs who support Jewish settlement of the occupied territories and the leftist Mapam which is opposed. Mr. Allon said a master plan for the Hebron suburb was being drawn up by a committee of experts and would be presented for discussion when completed. But he said that would not be for a year of possibly longer. Meanwhile, Mr. Allon said, interim plans were under consideration to provide housing for Jews who settled in Hebron nearly two years ago and are living within the military government compound there.

The Deputy Premier spoke in response to an agenda motion by Shmuel Tamir of the Free Center faction. He announced that plans were under way for eight new settlements in the occupied territories, four of them in the Golan Heights, two on the West Bank and two in the Sinai Peninsula. Twenty-two Jewish settlements have been set up in those areas since the June, 1967 war, most of them of the Nahal or para-military type which, Israeli authorities say, could be dismantled quickly. But the plans for Hebron indicated that Israel envisages a permanent Jewish community there. They were denounced by a Mapam spokesman on Kol Israel radio last night as being inimical to a future peace treaty with the Arabs. “We say that all options are open but how can they be if we establish such faits accomplish in the occupied areas,” he said.

Hebron, which had no Jewish population since the Arab riots of 1936, is regarded as a holy city by Orthodox Jews because it contains what they presume to be the tombs of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A group of religious Jews established themselves in the town shortly before Passover, 1968, a move which aroused the local Arabs and embarrassed the military government. They were permitted to stay on however but were confined to the military government compound for their own protection and to avoid clashes. Recently they complained that the Housing Ministry was delaying construction of permanent quarters for them. The Hebron settlers have the support of the right-wing nationalist Herut faction and the so-called Land of Israel movement which wants Israel to annex all territories occupied in the 1967 war.