Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, instructed his staff on Sunday to recruit dozens of new building inspectors to supervise the government’s temporary construction freeze in West Bank settlements, while some settler leaders vowed to defy the building ban.
Mr. Barak’s hurried efforts and the settler threats illustrated both the government’s seriousness and the difficulty it could face in carrying out its decision to halt new housing starts in the settlements over the next 10 months.
The government announced the construction halt on Wednesday, under pressure from the Obama administration to take steps to help revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But Palestinian leaders said the moratorium did not go far enough because it did not include East Jerusalem and allowed for the completion of up to 3,000 housing units that are already under construction.
The government decision also allows for some public buildings, and Mr. Barak has given approval for 28 new educational and other public institutions to be built during the moratorium.
To enforce the construction freeze, Mr. Barak called for 40 new inspectors to be recruited and trained within two weeks, with dozens more to be recruited later. There are currently only 14 building inspectors working in the West Bank, where some 300,000 Israelis live in about 120 official settlements and scores of unauthorized outposts among about 2.5 million Palestinians.
According to Mr. Barak’s office, the freeze will be enforced jointly by the police, the border police and the military’s Civil Administration in the West Bank.
But when a Civil Administration representative went Sunday to present the freeze order to Gershon Mesika, the leader of the Shomron Regional Council for settlements in the northern West Bank, Mr. Mesika tore up the papers he received, according to David Haivri, a spokesman for the Shomron Council. Moshe Rosenbaum, the leader of another regional council, Beit El, tore up the orders he received on Friday, according to Israeli radio.
Mr. Mesika called the orders “racist,” because they apply only to Jewish building, and declared that he did not “intend to respect them,” Mr. Haivri said.
It was not clear whether settler leaders would turn to illegal building or try to find some other way around the ban. But despite settler outrage at the freeze, there has already been a “positive aspect,” Mr. Haivri said.
The government has stated that buildings that have been approved and whose foundations have been laid may be completed. The settlers, who have been wary of a freeze for months, have been laying as many foundations as they could, both Mr. Haivri and critics who monitor settlement construction have said.
The Shomron Council is said to have signed many more permits so far this year than it did in 2008. Mr. Haivri said the threat of a freeze had “motivated many people here to take advantage of those permits” and to start building homes “before it is too late.”
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