Israel will invest no money in construction in the territories in the coming years if Kadima wins the upcoming election, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday.
‘Israel will not invest in construction or infrastructure development beyond the Green Line in the coming years,’ Olmert told a conference on railroad development in Tel Aviv. ‘The government will change the order of priorities. This change in the order of priorities, combined with economic growth, will free up billions of shekels for infrastructure development in the Negev, the Galilee and Jerusalem. We will invest huge amounts in infrastructure development in these areas.’
But despite Olmert's explicit statement that the government would make no investments at all over the Green Line, his associates said that this spending ban would not include the settlement blocs that Kadima wants Israel to retain under any future agreement. Olmert spoke without a written text, they explained, and the speech was not the result of a detailed discussion in which the message was decided upon and honed.
Overall, however, Olmert's statement fits in with the policy he has adopted over the last few days: one of trying to clarify his diplomatic program rather than leaving it vague. In particular, he has made it clear that he wants to determine Israel's eastern border along a line that will annex the maximum number of Jews and the minimum number of Arabs. For this purpose, he is planning a major additional withdrawal in the West Bank, and his statement about halting funding for construction in the settlements reflects this goal.
‘First we need to determine the border, and from that we will derive our investment and development plans - not the other way around,’ explained a government source, adding that there is no point in investing money in settlements that will eventually be evacuated.