Rabin Puts Lid on Land Takeovers : Mideast: Cabinet approves confiscation of Palestinian property in Jerusalem to build Israeli housing. Arabs say seizure of 131 acres, which premier vows will be last, threatens troubled peace process.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin promised Sunday that his government will seize no more Arab-owned land here to build Jewish neighborhoods--after one last confiscation of 131 acres in southern Jerusalem.

Left-wing Cabinet members forced a vote on that expropriation Sunday but were unable to block the planned seizure, even though four members of Rabin’s Labor Party abstained.

The vote to proceed drew Arab warnings that Israeli-Arab peace negotiations are in peril.

But Rabin did vow that there will be no further land confiscations from the city’s Palestinian residents for housing unless the Palestinian Authority agrees, Cabinet member Shulamit Aloni told reporters after the session.

“It was said openly in the government that it’s going to be the last one,” Aloni said. “The prime minister said it, and the minister of housing said it.” However, Rabin’s pledge does not cover seizures of land for military or road purposes.

Aloni, the minister of communications, is a leader of the left-wing Meretz Party, Labor’s primary coalition partner.

The four Meretz Cabinet ministers had demanded that the government freeze or cancel its order to confiscate the land, arguing that such action would pose a serious threat to ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and other senior officials in the Palestinian Authority have warned that the confiscation could derail the talks. Palestinian officials on Sunday said that Rabin’s promise not to take more land does not resolve the issue.

“This is not the end of the road for us,” said Marawan Kanafani, a spokesman for Arafat. “We should not accept this confiscation as a done deal with the promise of no confiscations in the future. This is a tyrannical decision which has to be canceled.”

Kanafani said that “extremists on both sides are now congratulating each other for this decision, which will lead to a crisis in the peace process.”

The Jordanian and Moroccan governments have formally protested the planned seizure, and Arab states brought the issue before the U.N. Security Council for a debate Friday. The Arab League is considering a summit on the issue, according to its secretary general, Ahmad Esmat Abdel Meguid.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who has criticized the confiscation plan and complained publicly that it was decided on without any Cabinet discussion, said Sunday that the government cannot back down now.

“The government has already made its decisions,” Peres told Army Radio before the Cabinet meeting began. “It is unacceptable that a government retreat in the middle of a campaign, and I do not think there is room to retreat.”

The confiscation plan, coupled with a move in the U.S. Congress to pass legislation requiring the Clinton Administration to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, has pushed the most sensitive issue confronting Israelis and Palestinians--the status of Jerusalem--to the forefront of the political agenda at a time when negotiations between the two already were going badly.

The sides still have not reached agreement on the next phase of their peace accord--the extension of Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian towns and villages there. Israel has promised to try to wrap up the negotiations by July 1, but the talks are moving slowly.

Palestinian officials say the slow pace, along with Israel’s ongoing, partial closure of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, is steadily eroding Palestinian support for continuing negotiations. And Israel’s senior intelligence officer, Maj. Gen. Uri Saguy, recently told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense committees that Arafat could be toppled unless the political and economic situation in the territories improves.

But Rabin has shown little willingness to consider Palestinian sensitivities in Jerusalem. There is near-consensus in Israel that the future of the city is not negotiable, despite Israel’s formal pledge in its September, 1993, peace accord with the Palestinians to discuss the city’s final status in talks due to begin in May, 1996.

Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the June, 1967, Arab-Israeli War. It subsequently annexed the area and launched a program to ring existing Arab neighborhoods with Jewish neighborhoods. Palestinians say that they want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

The international community has never recognized Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, and most nations keep their embassies in Tel Aviv. But the lack of formal recognition has not deterred Israeli governments and the Jerusalem municipality from seeking to strengthen the Jewish presence in Jerusalem by limiting building here for Palestinians.

An Israeli human rights organization, B’tselem, on Sunday issued a report that it said details a national and municipal policy of discrimination against Palestinians living in Jerusalem.

“Since the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli government has adopted a policy of systematic and deliberate discrimination against the city’s Palestinian population in all matters relating to expropriation of land, planning and building,” the report charges.

Using figures supplied by the city, B’tselem said that 38,500 housing units have been built on expropriated land in Jerusalem since 1967. Although most of the seized land belonged to Arabs, all of the units built on it were for Israelis.

The result, according to B’tselem, is that there is a severe housing shortage--estimated at 20,000 units--for the city’s Palestinian population, and the density of Palestinians per room is twice that of Israelis.

“The expropriations policy in East Jerusalem has been exclusively for the welfare of the Jewish population,” the report alleges. “The housing shortage and the basic urban needs of the city’s Palestinian population have been blatantly ignored.”