Sharon says Israel will have to make concessions
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – Under pressure to end three years of fighting, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Israel cannot hold on to all of the West Bank and Gaza, but also warned Palestinians that unless they moderate their demands he might take permanent hold of some of the land they seek for a state. “You do not have unlimited time,” he told a news conference, addressing the Palestinians. “There is a limit to our patience.”
Sharon’s talk about possible concessions was aimed at an increasingly impatient gallery of critics, ranging from U.S. officials to bickering coalition partners to ordinary Israelis despondent over the decline of their living standards and personal security.
The Palestinians responded with a sharp rebuke.
“This is an unprecedented, arrogant statement. It is rude and it lacks any vision,” said Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath. “He should declare that he is committed to the ‘road map’ and implement all the Israeli commitments that are in this map.”
Sharon said he remained committed to the U.S.-backed plan, which both sides accepted in principle in June, although Israel attached more than a dozen reservations. The plan calls for a Palestinian state by 2005.
But Sharon made clear that he will not fully abide by a road map requirement that Israel dismantle the scores of West Bank settlement outposts, many of them no more than a few trailer homes, which were established in recent years. He said some outposts have “supreme security value” and that “what is necessary will remain” – a statement Palestinians blasted as a blatant violation of the plan.
Sharon has also ignored the road map’s call for a freeze on construction in the 150 veteran Jewish settlements where some 220,000 settlers live; bids for hundreds of new homes have been published in recent months.
The Palestinians, for their part, have evaded the requirement that they dismantle militant groups that have killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and shootings in the three years since peace talks collapsed.
At the time, then-Palestinian Prime Minister Ehud Barak was proposing a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, with a foothold in Jerusalem. Although Sharon has never spelled out his proposals, the route of the barrier, and private comments by officials, suggest he is aiming for a state on far less land than the Palestinians seek, with no concession in Jerusalem.
New Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia’s goal appears to be ending the violence and then putting pressure on Sharon to come up with a concrete proposal. The road map does not spell out details such as the exact borders of a Palestinian state.
Palestinian militant groups are meeting in Cairo for truce talks next week, and there are expectations they might announce readiness to halt attacks.
On Thursday, Qureia said senior Israeli and Palestinian officials will meet next week to prepare for a summit between him and Sharon, presumably after the Cairo talks. Qureia has been balking at such a meeting, asking for assurances that it would yield results. Sharon has refused to discuss preconditions.
The Palestinians hope Israel and the United States would make do with just a cessation of the attacks and not a dismantling of the groups.
Sharon in the past has rejected that notion, but Israeli officials have recently suggested they might quietly accept it, at least in the short term.
The Palestinians are also demanding Israel stop building its security barrier, a system of fences, walls and trenches which is planned to stretch along a snaking path of some 360 miles, digging deep into the West Bank in several areas to incorporate large Jewish settlements into the “Israeli” side.
On Thursday Sharon said the construction of the barrier would continue and accused the Palestinian government of failing to take “even the smallest step… to stop terrorism.”
Sharon said if he feels the Palestinians are not serious about negotiating a peace deal, he may take unilateral steps, although he did not elaborate.
The unilateral term is understood by some to mean a dismantling of some settlements even without a peace plan – a move that would be difficult for Sharon, the main architect of the settlements, and might serve as an ice-breaker; but others take it to refer to the completion of the security barrier in a way that effectively annexes much of the West Bank – perhaps almost half – to Israel.
Sharon did offer something of a departure when questioned about Netzarim, a tiny isolated settlement abutting Gaza City which opposition parties and even one of his coalition allies have said should be removed. In the past, Sharon has said Netzarim was as important to Israel’s security as Tel Aviv.
Asked Thursday whether he could reassure Netzarim’s 60 families, Sharon replied: “I won’t give any promise to any person about any place.”
“We have to make a decision,” Sharon said. “It is clear that in the future we will not be in all the places we are now.”