Right-Wing Jews Leave Building In East Jerusalem; Guards Move In

Right-wing Jews occupying a house in East Jerusalem reached an agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday under which the families later left the building and were replaced by 10 Jewish religious students acting as guards and maintenance men.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat promptly declared that “it’s a trick, no more than that.” Israeli security officials said they were preparing for a potentially violent Palestinian reaction after Muslim prayers Friday.

So far, the dispute has seen only minor incidents of stone-throwing or police violence, evidently because the Palestinians were waiting to see what Netanyahu would do.

The deal was reached after two days of negotiations between Public Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani and representatives of Dr. Irving I. Moskowitz, the American Jewish millionaire who bought the house in the Arab neighborhood of Ras al-Amud and opened it to settlement by right-wing Israelis last Sunday.

Moskowitz’s action had posed a difficult challenge for Netanyahu. It came just after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright urged the prime minister to take a “time out” from actions that provoked the Palestinians, and it threatened a new wave of Palestinian violence just hen Netanyahu was making conciliatory gestures.

But the notion of evicting Jews from a house they legally owned in Jerusalem would certainly have set off fierce opposition from the prime minister’s religious and nationalist supporters. Many of his political allies threatened to quit his coalition if he moved against the settlers.

Under the deal struck with the settlers, the prime minister could claim that he had prevented Jewish settlers from moving permanently into East Jerusalem, since no family would be calling the place home. Moskowitz and the settlers, for their part, could claim that Jews were installed in East Jerusalem.

Moskowitz made no comment, but one of his lawyers, Dan Avi-Yitzhak, said the agreement “fully preserved” the “principle of Jewish possession.”

A Netanyahu spokesman said, “the prime minister believes the agreement that has been reached is, in the given circumstances, the best thing for unifying Jerusalem, the nation, and continuing the political process.”