- "While the Israeli government has dismantled some
outposts in the past few months, others have gone up in their place."
-
- Palestinians have dismissed Israel's latest list of 28
settlement outposts to be dismantled under a peace plan as inadequate and
deceptive.
-
- Israeli security sources said the 28 outposts were slated
for removal under the "road map" peace plan, which requires Israel
to take down all outposts built since March 2001.
-
- The Peace Now watchdog group says there are at least
60 of them. Several dozen others established earlier are not addressed
by the "road map".
-
- Palestinians say the outposts ñ and the foot-dragging
in removing them ñ are part of a larger effort to make it impossible
for them to set up a state in the West Bank and Gaza. They view all Jewish
settlement in the areas as illegal.
-
- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was dismissive of the
list. "They don't want peace, but the continuation of the military
operation and what they are doing, removing outposts here and there, which
is only deception," he said.
-
- The list was disclosed a day after Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon told a convention of his hardline Likud Party that even some
of the larger veteran settlements would have to be torn down under a peace
accord or moved as part of a proposed unilateral plan to disengage from
the Palestinians.
-
- The shift in the thinking of Sharon ñ the settlers'
patron for decades ñ underscored the effect on Israel of more than
three years of Mideast violence coupled with the US push to resolve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
-
- Speaking on Tuesday in Jerusalem, Efraim Halevy, a former
head of the Mossad secret service, said the willingness to remove settlements
was connected to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, which removed the threat
of attack from the east ñ one of the key reasons some in Israel
wanted to hold on to the West Bank.
-
- "One has to reconsider the settlements in terms
of their strategic (importance) as they are today, not as they were yesterday
or the day before. Strategic considerations ... change over the years,"
Halevy said.
-
- Halevy, who also served as head of Sharon's National
Security Council and as a special envoy but is now out of public service,
said the "road map" cannot be implemented. "We know this,
and the Palestinians know this, and the United States knows this,"
Halevy told foreign journalists.
-
- Noting that the plan's first target dates ñ stopping
all violence, reforming the Palestinian Authority and setting up a provisional
Palestinian state by 2003 ñ have passed, Halevy said the real role
of the plan was to serve as a catalyst for restarting peace talks. With
negotiations going in their own direction, the provisions of the road map
document would be irrelevant, he said.
-
- Neither side has carried out the first provisions of
the road map, which requires the Palestinians to dismantle violent groups
and Israel to take down outposts and freeze construction in veteran settlements.
-
- While the Israeli government has dismantled some outposts
in the past few months, others have gone up in their place.
-
- Although few believe Sharon will ever meet the Palestinian
demand for a total withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, in Israel his
recent statements have been viewed by many as a significant departure from
past policy.
-
- He received boos and catcalls from Likud Party activists
on Monday when he said: "It is clear that in a permanent peace accord,
we will have to give up some of the Jewish settlements."
-
- Yesterday, Palestinians said Israeli forces had withdrawn
from the West Bank city of Nablus after a three-week operation. The army
said, however, that the operation continues. Last week Israeli forces withdrew
one day, only to re-enter the next morning. During the three-week sweep,
12 Palestinians were killed.
-
- Speaking to reporters in Nablus, a senior Israeli commander
said his troops had trapped a potential suicide bomber. "Nablus is
the hottest and most dangerous town," he said. "Most of the suicide
bombers, most of the bombs, most of the ammunition, is in Nablus."
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- ©2004 Scotsman.com
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- http://www.news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2380555
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