- Israeli settlers defy inspectors trying to stop building
- Scuffles in East Jerusalem over house awarded to settlers
- Netanyahu reiterates moratorium is only temporary
By Baz Ratner
KIRYAT ARBA, West Bank, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Israeli inspectors trying to enforce a government moratorium on new building starts in Jewish settlements ran into defiance on Tuesday at an enclave in the occupied West Bank.
About a dozen settlers challenged several inspectors who had come to halt construction at a building site in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, adjacent to the West Bank city of Hebron.
"You should be ashamed of yourselves," one settler shouted as an inspector, accompanied by a policeman and an army officer, surveyed the hilltop tract where several red-roofed homes stood next to empty plots.
There was no violence, but also no sign that settlers in Kiryat Arba, who claim a biblical right to the land, would obey the stop-work orders.
Under pressure from the United States, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a 10-month freeze on new housing projects last week in an attempt to persuade Palestinians to return to U.S.-sponsored peace talks suspended a year ago.
In an effort to ease the fears of the settlers, many of whom are political allies of his right-wing Likud party, Netanyahu told an audience in Tel Aviv the moratorium was "a one-time decision and it is temporary."
"We shall resume building once the moratorium is over," and the future of the settlements in occupied land "shall be determined only through peace negotiations and not a single day beforehand," Netanyahu said.
FRESH APPEAL TO PALESTINIANS
Netanyahu also urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yet again to resume negotiations suspended since last December and said the Palestinians "need this peace no less than we do."
Abbas has demanded a settlement freeze before talks may resume and has rejected the construction hiatus as insufficient.
The moratorium does not apply to some 3,000 settler housing units under construction, nor to 500 other housing units recently approved, Netanyahu said. It also does not apply to areas Israel annexed to its Jerusalem municipality after a 1967 war.
In East Jerusalem, scuffles erupted between Jewish settlers and Palestinians as the settlers cleaned part of a home an Israeli court has awarded them in what Palestinians say is part of a campaign to drive them out of the city.
An Israeli man suffered a minor head injury after being smacked with a wooden plank, television footage showed.
The house was the seventh in East Jerusalem awarded this year to settlers following Israeli court battles.
Richard Miron, a United Nations spokesman in Jerusalem, issued a statement saying U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon has "expressed his dismay at the continuation of demolitions, evictions and the instalment of Israeli settlers in Palestinian neighbourhoods in occupied East Jerusalem."
Miron added that "provocative actions such as these create inevitable tensions, undermine trust, often have tragic human consequences and make resuming negotiations and achieving a two state solution more difficult."
(Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Charles Dick) ((jeffrey.heller@reuters.com ; +972 2 632 2202; Reuters Messaging: jeffrey.heller.reuters.com@reuters.net))