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S P E C I A L Struggle for Peace

Israel pledges more homes in West Bank

Militant warns of more bombings

September 25, 1997
Web posted at: 11:49 a.m. EDT (1149 GMT)

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to build 300 new Jewish housing units in the West Bank, prompting outrage among Palestinian officials Thursday and threats of more suicide bombings from a senior Islamic militant.

Netanyahu made his comments Wednesday night during a visit to the West Bank settlement of Efrat, south of Bethlehem, where he said construction would begin soon.

"We are building in Judea and Samaria," Netanyahu told hundreds of Jewish religious teen-agers at the Efrat settlement, using the biblical names for the West Bank. "And we are building in Efrat."

The Mideast peace process has been stalled since March, when Israel broke ground on a new Jewish neighborhood in a disputed area on the outskirts of east Jerusalem. Palestinians claim the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the area where they want to establish a future independent state.

As word of Netanyahu's pledge spread across the region, a senior Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, said Israel was provoking members of the fundamentalist group to commit violent acts.

Two recent suicide bombings in Jerusalem, claimed by Hamas militants, killed 25 people, including five bombers.

Rantisi told Israel TV's Channel Two that thousands of Palestinians were willing to blow themselves up in Israeli cities. "And if I said tens of thousands, I'm saying the truth," Rantisi said.

"Israel should not expect us to dance to the tune of peace while they are bulldozing confiscated land and building settlements and strengthening the Zionist presence in Palestine," Rantisi told The Associated Press Thursday.

The top Palestinian official in Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, also predicted that Netanyahu's pledge to build more settlements would trigger more violence.

There was no immediate comment from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Netanyahu criticized by U.S.

"The dream of peace some days seems to be turning into a nightmare," said Martin Indyk, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, after receiving word of Netanyahu's announcement.

Netanyahu was quickly reprimanded by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who said such construction was not consistent with the climate needed for resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Albright, on her first visit to the region earlier this month, had asked for a "time-out" in Israeli settlement building to help get the peace process back on track. Netanyahu's government rejected that request, saying there could be no movement in the peace process until the Palestinians cracked down on terrorism.

Bombers were Hamas activists

Netanyahu made his announcement Wednesday as Arafat was scrambling to defend himself against Israeli accusations that his Palestinian Authority let four suicide bombers slip away.

Earlier this week, Israel announced that, using DNA testing, it had identified four of five suicide bombers involved in the two recent attacks as Hamas activists from the West Bank village of Assira. Arafat had insisted that the bombers came from abroad.


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