Chinese workers to be moved after US pressure

Jerusalem Post ^ | Dec. 6, 2003 | AP

[yonif]

Chinese construction workers housed by their Israeli employers in trailers in the West Bank are to be moved to a site inside Israel after intense US pressure, Channel 2 reported Saturday.

The migrant Chinese laborers are building a new neighborhood in Kiryat Sefer, which sits just inside the Green Line, Channel 2 reported. But the workers have been living in trailers inside the West Bank, just meters from a Palestinian village. Israel is under intense US pressure to dismantle more than 100 unauthorized Jewish outposts set up in the past two years on land the Palestinians want for a future state.

The Chinese outpost was spotted by Israeli air force pilots dispatched by the Defense Ministry to take aerial photos of makeshift Jewish settlements built in the West Bank without government authorization, the TV reported. Army officials showed up last week to tell the workers they would have to leave.

Television footage showed Chinese men wandering in and out of the trailers, apparently unaware of the international controversy their half-dozen trailers have caused. The report said the construction company did not realize it was housing the workers on West Bank land.

Israeli soldiers have clashed with Jewish settlers while dismantling outposts, which unlike the 150 larger, established settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are often made up of just a few trailers, an antenna and an Israeli flag. Settlers often return to the same place hours after being removed.

Recently, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the government would legalize some of the outposts that it considers to be strategically located, effectively establishing new settlements despite Israeli assurances to the United States that it would not put up new Jewish communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The move would also violate the US-backed "road map" peace plan, which calls on Israel to freeze all settlement construction.