- (PA News) -- Palestinians and Israeli hardliners tonight
rejected statements by US President George Bush supporting some Israeli
settlements in the West Bank and ruling out the right of Palestinian refugees
to return to their homes in Israel.
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- Bush was speaking after meeting Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon in Washington, where Sharon presented his plan for an Israeli
withdrawal from all of the Gaza Strip, along with a smaller pullback in
the West Bank.
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- The plan faces a referendum of members of Sharonís
Likud Party on May 2, and Sharon supporters hoped Bush's statement would
persuade sceptical voters that the "disengagement" plan was worthwhile.
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- Likud Cabinet minister Tsipi Livni, who had expressed
doubts about the pullout plan, said she was somewhat reassured by Bush's
pledges. "I'm not ecstatic," she told Israel TV. "I'm apprehensive
regarding the process, but I will support if we really get these things."
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- Cabinet minister Uzi Landau, leading the Likud campaign
against the Sharon initiative, said the Bush speech yielded "a thin
harvest". He urged other Likud Cabinet ministers to join his drive
"to stop this bad initiative" and called a planning meeting of
his allies for tomorrow morning.
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- Hardliners oppose evacuating settlements in principle,
and are against Sharon's unilateral pullback plan, calling it a "reward
for terrorism" that would spur more violence.
-
- Bush said a peace agreement must take into account realities
that have developed in the decades since Israel captured the West Bank.
He said the existence of Israeli population centres ñ referring
to settlements ñ must be taken into account.
-
- It was the first time a US president had come that close
to legitimising Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which were traditionally
denounced as "obstacles to peace" in previous administrations.
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- Palestinians demand a state in all of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, with the removal of all Israeli settlements.
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- Bush also said the problem of Palestinian refugees must
be solved in the framework of a Palestinian state, rebuffing a key Palestinian
demand of right of return of the refugees and their descendants to their
original homes in Israel.
-
- Minutes after Bush spoke, Palestinian Prime Minister
Ahmed Qureia harshly criticised the US president's stand. "He is the
first president who has legitimised the settlements in the Palestinian
territories when he said that there will be no return to the borders of
1967," he said. "We as Palestinians reject that, we cannot accept
that, we reject it and we refuse it."
-
- Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat also dismissed
Bush's statement. "This is like someone giving a part of Texas's land
to China," he said.
-
- He added that over the years, US administrations have
assured the Palestinians that issues like borders and settlements would
be handled in negotiations between the two sides.
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- Erekat said: "If Israel wants to make peace, it
must talk to the Palestinian leadership."
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- On Monday, before leaving for Washington, Sharon listed
five main settlement blocs Israel intends to keep in a final peace deal.
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- Qureia objected to the unilateral nature of Israel's
planned moves, ignoring the Palestinians. "These issues can be determined
only through negotiations and cannot be determined through promises from
the leader of this or that country," he said. "This can be decided
only by the Palestinian leadership."
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- Besides opposition within his own Likud Party, Sharon
faces resignations from two of his three coalition partners, identified
closely with the settlement movement.
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- ©2004 Scotsman.com http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2781580
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