West Bank settlers furious at peace move

TEL AVIV, Israel, April 13 (UPI) -- Hard-line Jewish settlers in the West Bank are threatening "unilateral steps" after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was reported to be mulling a military withdrawal from the region to avert a "diplomatic tsunami" if the Palestinians declare their own state.

The hard-liners hinted at a possible takeover of parts of the West Bank, which religious Jews call by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria.

That could trigger a dangerous confrontation between diehard settlers and the Israeli government, more explosive than previous showdowns.

Sources close to Netanyahu's inner Cabinet say a military withdrawal is one of several options he's examining amid growing expectations that the United Nations General Assembly will endorse a unilateral Palestinian declaration of an independent state within the 1967 borders in September.

The settlers' governing council declared Tuesday warned that Netanyahu was "radiating panic" at the prospect of a Palestinian declaration of statehood.

"The correct path is to clarify that unilateral Palestinian steps will be met with our own unilateral steps, such as the assumption of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria or parts of it," it said.

The extremists among the estimated 300,000 settlers have been alarmed by recent shifts in mainstream Israeli thinking about the value of holding onto the West Bank.

This trend, which has been gathering momentum for some time, was embodied in a commentary written by prominent Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld and published by The Forward, a U.S. Jewish weekly, in December.

He concluded that "it is crystal clear that Israel can easily afford to give up the West Bank" and most of Arab East Jerusalem, both occupied since 1967, without sacrificing its security and survivability as a nation state.

To rightwing hard-liners, who claim that God gave the West Bank to the Jews for eternity, this is anathema and a blasphemous betrayal.

"Strategically speaking," van Creveld wrote, "the risk of doing so is negligible.

"What is not negligible is the demographic, social, cultural and political challenge that ruling over 2.5 million -- nobody know exactly how many -- occupied Palestinians in the West Bank poses.

"Should Israeli rule over them continue, then the country will definitely turn into what it already fast becoming: namely, an apartheid state that can only maintain its control by means of repressive secret police actions," van Creveld wrote.

"To save itself from such a fate, Israel should rid itself of the West Bank, most of Arab Jerusalem specifically included. If possible it should do so by agreement with the Palestinian Authority; if not, then it should proceed unilaterally."

There have been other signs the settlers fear the government is moving toward what they deem a sell-out.

The liberal Haaretz daily reported that hard-line settlers and rightwing religious Jews had mounted an "organized campaign" to prevent Netanyahu appointing a security chief who has hounded Jewish extremists to be director of the General Security Service, Israel's equivalent of the FBI and known as Shin Bet.

The official, known only as "I" for security reasons, headed the service's Jewish Department and been responsible for arresting Jewish extremists who attacked Arabs.

Netanyahu did not appoint him. Haaretz said "this was accomplished by directing political pressure at the prime minister."

The newspaper declared the hard-liners' "inappropriate intervention demonstrated their continued degeneration into behavior best described as sectarian, tribal and provincial."

It's not clear why Netanyahu did not promote "I" to replace the outgoing GSS chief, Yuval Diskin, who had warned of the dangers posed by Jewish extremists as he prepared to leave office May 15.

There clearly was political pressure. But whatever the reasons, Netanyahu's choice was in the end someone who is expected to get tough with the hardliners.

Yoram Cohen is an Arabist and deputy director with 30 years' experience in Shin Bet, most of it in the West Bank where he ran the organization's counter-terrorism unit.

Cohen, 51, is also a religious Jew, the first to be appointed to head Shin Bet.

Rightwing extremists believe he will crack down hard on them, if only to prove his credentials at a time when attacks on Palestinians by Jewish hardliners have intensified.

Cohen "is known as a hater of settlers," said leading activist Noam Federman, "and a prominent one at that."