- JERUSALEM (AP) -- Ultra-Orthodox
Jews armed with assault rifles lugged boxes, sofas and potted plants into
two buildings in a crowded Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem at daybreak Wednesday,
sparking clashes between Israeli troops and angry residents.
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- Israeli officials said the group had the right to live
in the buildings in east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing
it in the 1967 Mideast War.
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- Palestinian officials said the incident proved Israel
was less interested in peace than in tightening its grasp on east Jerusalem,
which they want for the capital of a future state.
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- Later Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
defended his plan to unilaterally withdraw from most or all of the Gaza
Strip and parts of the West Bank. A day earlier, he agreed to a binding
referendum among his rebellious Likud Party members on the "disengagement"
plan.
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- Sharon said Israel must draw its own security line, which
would mean "withdrawal from areas which it is understood will not
be under Israeli control in any permanent agreement to be signed in the
future, which cause great friction between Israelis and Palestinians -
the Gaza Strip, for example."
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- A poll published Wednesday in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper
showed 51 percent of Likud members support the plan, while 36 percent oppose
it. The Dahaf Institute poll questioned 507 Likud members and had a margin
of error of 4.4 percentage points.
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- Sharon blamed the Palestinians for not acting to stop
violence. An Israeli pullout from Gaza would remove their main "excuse,"
he said, and then, "we need to tell them, please gentlemen, when there
is no Israeli presence, let's see you start to act."
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- Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia cautiously welcomed
the Gaza plan, but only as a first step to a full West Bank withdrawal.
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- "In principle, we welcome the Israeli withdrawal
from our Palestinian land," Qureia told Palestinian lawmakers. "But
for any withdrawal to have meaning for us ... it should be followed by
a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, too."
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- Palestinians want a state in all the West Bank and Gaza.
But many in Sharon's hard-line government view his limited withdrawal plan
as the most they are willing to concede.
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- Qureia also condemned Palestinian suicide attacks, which
have killed more than 450 Israelis in the past 3 years of violence, saying
they have damaged the Palestinian economy, given Israel cover to continue
building settlements and a contentious West Bank barrier, and were morally
wrong.
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- "Such attacks were used as excuses to continue the
comprehensive aggression and impose collective punishments, including ...
the road blocks and incursions, which cause daily harm to the dignity of
hundreds of thousand of innocent Palestinian citizens," he said.
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- Early Wednesday, a group Jews with a van packed with
sofas and furniture moved into a seven-story apartment building and a smaller
house in the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem. The settlers hauled
a water tank onto the roof of one building and set up a generator.
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- In recent years, hawkish Jewish groups, with the backing
of hard-line governments and foreign investors, have bought several east
Jerusalem buildings, including several in Silwan, to strengthen Israel's
hold there. Settlers said eight families are to move into the Silwan buildings.
The Arab owner of the house disputed the settlers' claim.
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- Clashes erupted in a narrow alley, and Palestinian residents
threw stones from roofs.
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- Police and soldiers ran onto other rooftops and fired
tear gas at the demonstrators. Troops pulled young men out of nearby homes,
beat one of them with a baton, and dragged away six others in handcuffs.
They took no action against the settlers.
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- Nine Palestinians were arrested for stone-throwing, and
six police officers were hurt, police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said. At
least three Palestinians were seen bleeding.
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- About 200,000 Israelis live in 11 Jewish neighborhoods
built on land captured in 1967, said Menachem Klein, a researcher at the
Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Another 2,000 Israelis live among
220,000 Arabs in Muslim and Christian neighborhoods of east Jerusalem,
about half of them in the Muslim Quarter of the walled Old City and as
many as 400 in nearby Silwan, he said.
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- Sharon himself moved into an apartment in the Muslim
Quarter in 1987, but has rarely used it.
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- The group of Ultra-Orthodox Jews said Wednesday they
had come to reinforce the Jewish presence in Silwan, which they said housed
a community of Yemenite Jews 122 years ago. In 1938, the last of the families
were forced to leave during Arab riots, said Daniel Luria, a spokesman
for the group.
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- "Sixty-six years later, we have returned Jewish
families to the area with the idea of living side-by-side with the Arabs,"
Luria said, adding that three of the eight families are of Yemenite heritage
so "it's really closing a circle."
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- Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin said the group had the right
to live where it wanted in Jerusalem. "There are no Jerusalem settlements
... all of Jerusalem is under Israeli sovereignty since 1967," he
said.
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- Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat blamed Israel's
government for supporting settlers and played down the government's removal
early Wednesday of the Hazon David settlement outpost - a tent and a shack
used as a synagogue - near Hebron in the southern West Bank.
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- Under the stalled "road map" peace plan, Israel
is supposed to take down dozens of unauthorized outposts and Palestinians
must dismantle violent groups.
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- The Hazon David removal was a public relations stunt,
Erekat said, but the move into the Jerusalem buildings, "that's the
reality."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3925107,00.html
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