<font color=brown>Well at least Sharon is honest!<font color=black>
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Israel will ditch road map, says Sharon
Agencies
Wednesday September 15, 2004
The Israeli government does not intend to honour the US-backed road map to peace in the Middle East once it has completed a planned pullout from Gaza, an Israeli newspaper reported today.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, told the Yediot Ahronot daily that there might not be any troop pullbacks after Israel had carried out its so-called unilateral "disengagement" from the Palestinians - withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements - in 2005.
"It is very possible that, after the evacuation, there will be a long period when nothing else happens," Mr Sharon said. He told the paper it was impossible to say whether this could signal decades of stalemate.
Mr Sharon said that, as long as there was no significant shift in the Palestinian leadership and policy, Israel would "continue its war on terrorism, and will stay in the territories [of the West Bank] that will remain after the implementation of disengagement".
The road map to peace was launched last year, envisaging a Palestinian state by 2005. The plan did not specify the borders of that state, but senior US officials said Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza had to come to an end.
The US president, George Bush, has since said it would be "unrealistic" to expect Israel to remove large West Bank settlements - a statement interpreted by Mr Sharon as backing for his plan to keep large settlement blocs in any future deal with the Palestinians.
In the Yediot interview, Mr Sharon was asked how his disengagement plan differed from a proposal by the former Israeli opposition leader Amram Mitzna. Mr Mitzna last year said Israel should restart peace talks with the Palestinians by withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, including the isolated settlement of Netzarim.
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guardian.co.uk |
