Rabin Vows To Slow West Bank Settlement

Attempting to defuse a crisis over Jewish settlements, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin promised Wednesday that all new housing starts in the occupied West Bank must get full Cabinet approval.

Rabin made the pledge during a meeting with his junior coalition partner, the liberal Meretz Party, which had demanded a halt to all settlement construction and warned that peace talks with the Palestinians were in danger.

“From now on, any act of construction will need the approval of the full Cabinet,” Rabin’s spokesman, Oded Ben-Ami, told The Associated Press.

Ben-Ami could not say whether about 4,000 units currently under construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank would be completed.