Israeli Cabinet Sends Message To Palestinians

Further raising the tension between Israel and the Palestinians, the Israeli Cabinet on Friday approved economic aid to strengthen Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The decision was a message to the Palestinians, in direct response to the drive-by killings two days ago of an Israeli settler and her son outside the Beit El settlement, north of Jerusalem.

While it didn’t technically violate the terms of the Oslo peace agreement, it ran counter to the spirit of Oslo, which was designed in part to stop Israeli settlement building until a final peace deal was signed.

Israel’s decision seemed a return of the days of 1992 and earlier, before the late Yitzhak Rabin and his successor Shimon Peres engineered historic peace agreements with the Palestinians.

Still, some Cabinet ministers Friday wanted much more than a benefits package for West Bank settlers. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who proposed the aid package, argued against a call for new Jewish settlements on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

“This is not the time to establish new settlements,” he said. “We must not make a decision which will mean abolishing the Oslo process. We shall fight against terrorism and at the same time we shall continue with the peace process.”

Also on Friday, a number of rockets fired from southern Lebanon landed in northern Israel, the first such attack since an April cease-fire.