Accept us or leave, says Jewish settler

PALESTINIANS must accept that the West Bank is part of Israel and become loyal Israeli citizens - without voting rights - or leave, a spokesman for Israeli settler communities will tell a public meeting tomorrow.

Director of the Shomron Liaison Office, David Ha'ivri, says only Jews have a right to the West Bank and, having won by conquest in 1967 what was already theirs, must keep it.

''Israel needs to annex and control all the area in its possession today. People who live in that area need to be loyal to the state of Israel,'' Mr Ha'ivri told The Age yesterday.

The Shomron is a group of 33 Jewish towns in the West Bank, most run by fundamentalist settlers, and Mr Ha'ivri has come to Melbourne to seek support in the face of international pressure to close the settlements as illegal.

However, Jewish community leaders here said Mr Ha'ivri would find little support. Jewish Community Council of Victoria president, John Searle, said a one-state solution was not a view most in the Melbourne Jewish community would adopt, provided the Palestinians accepted a Jewish state with secure borders.

Rabbi Fred Morgan, of Temple Beth Israel, said most Melbourne Jews wanted a just solution for both peoples seeking a homeland, which required a two-state solution.

Mr Ha'ivri, who will speak at the Beth Weizmann Community Centre tomorrow evening, said only the Jewish people had sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).

''We were expelled by the Romans in 70AD and for 2000 years in exile we never gave up claim to the land. In that time, no other sovereign state was set up there - it was controlled by a foreign country, whether Romans, Ottomans, British or Jordanians,'' he said. ''Our claim to the land is a religious claim.''