Israel Mulls Moving Hebron Jews : Mideast: Cabinet is split on relocating 450 settlers to avoid future clashes. Such a move would mark a retreat from policy on occupied lands.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government is considering the removal of 450 Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank town of Hebron, where a settler 10 days ago massacred more than 40 Palestinians as they prayed in a mosque.

The move, certain to be bitterly resisted if ordered, would mark the beginning of Israel’s retreat from the 144 settlements it has established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since capturing the territories 27 years ago.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said repeatedly last week that he is against forcing the settlers to move, fearing that a backlash among Israelis would endanger his minority government and believing that withdrawal from Hebron would push the future of all settlements into current negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

But Tourism Minister Uzi Baram said after the Sunday Cabinet meeting that more than half the 16 ministers favor removing the Hebron settlers--42 families and about 100 students at a Jewish seminary living in four Hebron neighborhoods--to avoid future clashes there.

A decision is expected in a week, Baram said.

“We want to minimize the areas of conflict between us and the Palestinians,” Immigration Minister Yair Tsaban added. “To allow the settlers to remain in the midst of the Palestinian population in Hebron, we would have to send in many troops, and that would enlarge and sharpen the conflict.”

Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former general and a Rabin confidant, was equally blunt in his call for the settlers’ removal from Hebron, characterizing their presence there as an unnecessary problem for the government as well as a danger to themselves and the soldiers sent to protect them.

“The continued existence of the Jewish community in Hebron is a terrible danger--to them, first of all--and so I want to evacuate them,” Ben-Eliezer said. “So long as they are still there, I believe it creates friction and draws fire.”

More than 1,000 troops are now needed in Hebron to guard the settlers there, according to military sources, and this presence in the heart of an Arab city of more than 65,000 leads to daily, often fatal clashes with Palestinian residents.

As a city holy to both Jews and Muslims, Hebron has been a flash point of much religious and political violence over the years.

Justice Minister David Libai, who ordered plans drafted for removing the settlers, commented last week: “We should remove all radical Jewish elements from the heart of the Arab population centers. We must consider how much we invest in their safety and how much of a future they have.”

The easiest way to carry out the settlers’ removal from Hebron and other Palestinian towns, Israeli officials said, would be to declare them “closed military areas.”

Military authorities now have the legal powers needed to remove the settlers, the officials said.

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat is calling for removal of Israeli settlers from within and around Palestinian towns and villages as a condition for resuming negotiations on implementing the agreement on Palestinian autonomy.

Dr. Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab who advises Arafat, said evacuating the settlers from Hebron would be “a first step to improve the atmosphere for peace talks.”

“This would be a highly symbolic act, and consequently it would be of considerable value to the peace process,” Tibi said, adding that it would make clear Israel’s readiness to discuss the future of the 130,000 Israeli settlers who live among the 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But the proposal has drawn criticism from the Israeli right.

“Who says this will bring peace nearer?” asked a commentator in the popular newspaper Maariv last week. “Maybe the contrary will happen--that this will prove to the Palestinians that there is only one way to make peace: That is through the expulsion of Jews from the (West Bank) territory of Judea and Samaria.

“If Israel is actually prepared to remove voluntarily the Jewish community of Hebron, nothing more is required other than to tell Palestinian radicals to intensify their terrorism, to fight the settlers and to increase the number of friction points, whether in Jaffa or Nazareth, so as to persuade the Jews that peace will only come if the Jews remove the settlers.”

Israeli Cabinet ministers, mindful of such strong opposition, on Sunday emphasized their reluctance to make political concessions because of the Hebron massacre, which was carried out by Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn-born physician who lived in Kiryat Arba, outside Hebron, and belonged to the extremist Kach movement.

Still, the Cabinet did vote to order the attorney general to charge anyone who praises the mosque massacre with incitement, punishable with several years in prison.

“We have done so much already,” said Economics Minister Shimon Shetreet, “that it is up to the Palestinians to go back to the negotiating table.”

Tsaban, a member of the dovish Meretz Party, said, “I want to emphasize (the withdrawal of the settlers) will not be a response to the pressure of the PLO.”

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres described the move as “totally unnecessary.”

“I prefer that we shall implement what was agreed already instead of trying again to reach a new agreement,” Peres said, arguing that the removal of the Hebron settlers would reopen the basic accord, which put off discussion of the settlers’ future for two years.

Israelis are deeply divided on the issue. A newspaper poll Friday, for example, showed that 78% of Israelis condemned the massacre but 55% opposed the PLO demand to evacuate settlers from Hebron.

Last Sunday, the Cabinet ordered the detention without trial of 10 extremist leaders in the settler movement, the restriction of the movements and activities of 20 others and the disarming of 30 more. Police have had little success in carrying out these orders.

In Damascus, a senior European Union official called Sunday for rapid security steps, such as the removal of the Hebron settlements, in the Israeli-occupied territories to restore Palestinian confidence and get the peace negotiations on track again.

Hans van den Broek, the commissioner for foreign relations for the European Union, formerly the European Community, said the responsibility for this lies with Israel.

Speedy action is needed “to show Palestinians that we are not only showing compassion with their grief . . . (but) we indeed are looking for ways and means to further help them enhance their security, which is of course the prime responsibility of the Israeli government,” Van den Broek said.

Among left-wing Israelis, the demand is growing for removal of the settlers, starting in Hebron and Kiryat Arba. At a Tel Aviv rally of more than 10,000 Saturday night, banners in the crowd read, “Remove all the settlements now,” and many carried stickers saying “Kiryat Arba First.”

“Israelis are sick of the settlers and their extremism,” said Tzali Reshef, a leader of the Peace Now group that organized the rally. “It is time to leave Hebron, it is time to leave Kiryat Arba, it is time for the settlers to return home to Israel.”