Israelis Seize Hill; Netanyahu Loses Ground Deal Reached With Settlers, But Hopes Dim For Hebron Pact

Jewish settlers seized a hilltop before dawn here Friday morning, a harbinger of a day full of trouble for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from his core political supporters on the right.

The bid to found a new Jewish neighborhood on Artis Hill, repulsed after a daylong standoff with police and soldiers, preceded a stormy Cabinet session in which some of Netanyahu’s most loyal lieutenants threatened to desert him over an emerging agreement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The political arithmetic for the first time made it possible, though still not likely, that Netanyahu could fail to muster a majority in his government for withdrawing Israeli forces from most of the West Bank city of Hebron.

A general hardening of positions on Hebron, two days after an attempted massacre of Arabs there by a mentally disturbed Jewish soldier, pushed an Israeli-Palestinian accord out of reach again Friday. Arafat is holding out for guaranteed dates for further Israeli withdrawals in the rural West Bank and for a Palestinian role in security at Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs. Netanyahu told his Cabinet, according to aides, that he would not agree to either.

Withdrawal from any part of the city, which Jewish nationalists regard as their biblical patrimony, is fiercely opposed by the ideological camp that Netanyahu headed as opposition leader until last May.

Settlement leaders have campaigned intensively against the Hebron accord all week. Friday morning they organized a covert operation to take control of Artis Hill.

Working silently under cover of darkness, settlers towed seven mobile homes to the site and planted a sign declaring it a new neighborhood of Beit El, just north of the large Arab city of Ramallah.

More than a hundred Israeli police and hundreds of troops gathered at the site, and senior officers ordered the settlers to leave. But they made no effort to enforce the order, relaxing in the warm sunshine for hours while awaiting political guidance from Netanyahu.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai averted a showdown by negotiating an agreement with the settlers by midafternoon. They agreed to leave the hill and their mobile homes behind, and to remove the mobile homes on Sunday. Mordechai agreed to come to Beit El that day to discuss their grievances.