Israeli PM names new advisor convicted of killing Palestinian teen

July 13, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered an advisory post to a Jewish settler leader involved in a 1988 killing of a Palestinian youth during an anti-Israeli protest, a settler spokeswoman said on Monday.

Netanyahu's spokesmen would neither confirm or deny he had asked Pinchas Wallerstein, 60, director-general of the settlers' YESHA council, to serve as the prime minister's adviser on settlement affairs, Reuters said.

Aliza Herbst, a YESHA spokeswoman, said Wallerstein "has definitely been offered the job," and has been filling out forms for a vetting process by Israel's attorney-general, and that it wasn't clear how long that may take.

Muslim world and West has urged Israel to halt settlement activity as part of a bid to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

But Wallerstein has conditioned acceptance of the post on Israel continuing to reject U.S. President Barack Obama's call to stop all construction in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Herbst said in a telephone interview.

In 1988, Wallerstein was sentenced to only four months' community service for killing of a 16-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank.

Court support of killings of Palestinians

International critics of Israel's West Bank occupation have long cited the case as an example of support that Israeli courts have shown to soldiers and settlers who killed Palestinians.

Wallerstein would replace Uzi Keren, an Israeli kibbutz leader, who has held the position since being named about seven years ago by former prime minister Ariel Sharon, still comatose since suffering a stroke in 2006.

The World Court has ruled all settlements illegal under international law. The United States and European Union regard them as obstacles to peace.

Palestinians, who want their own state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, see the settlements as a land grab as an occupier "state".

Israel occupied East Jerusalem along with the rest of the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights in June 1967. In 1980 Israel annexed the eastern half of Jerusalem, declaring the whole of the city it 'eternal capital,' a step rejected by the UN Security Council.

Netanyahu, under U.S. and Western pressure, has pledged not to build new settlements in the West Bank or extend more land. Further discussions are planned between Mitchell and Net World Court ruled Jewish settlements were illegal.

The Group of Eight leading powers and the Quartet of Middle East peace brokers, meeting in Trieste, northern Italy, last week, both called for a total freeze on construction in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, including on "natural growth" of existing settlements.