By: Karin Laub, Associated Press
ARIEL (AP).- An artists’ boycott of a $11 million performing arts center opening Monday in the Jewish settlement of Ariel is giving a new twist to a pressing question — where should Israel’s permanent borders run? Leading Israeli playwrights, actors and artists say they will not cross the “Green Line” — Israel’s frontier before it captured the West Bank in 1967 — to perform in the new theater in Ariel, an Israeli enclave of 19,000 people. The artists wrote in a letter explaining the boycott that Ariel was built in the heart of a war-won land to prevent creation of a Palestinian state. Ariel’s defenders say most Israelis want the settlement to be annexed to Israel in any future peace deal. In an angry backlash led by hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, they have threatened to strip the protesters of their government subsidies. The argument flared as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived Sunday in the U.S., wher