<font size=4>Sharon Says Israel Might Use Wall to Create Palestinian Border<font size=3>
December 18, 2003
Sharon Says Israel Might Use Wall to Create Palestinian Border
By GREG MYRE New York Times
JERUSALEM, Dec. 18 - <font size=4> Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said in a major policy address today that if the current peace efforts fail to bring progress within months, Israel will begin severing links with the Palestinians by pulling out of some settlements and establishing a new "security line."
The Israeli leader, making his most detailed remarks to date on how he planned to approach the stalled Middle East peace process, said the best solution would be a negotiated deal with the Palestinians on the basis of the current proposal, known as the road map. The plan calls for a comprehensive peace settlement and the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005.
But if "the Palestinians do not make their own contribution in implementing the road map, then within a number of months Israel will take its own steps in order to sever its links with the aim of reducing terror to the absolute minimum," Mr. Sharon said.
"We will not wait forever," Mr. Sharon said in his remarks at a conference organized by the Israeli Institute for Policy and Strategy and held in Herzliya, just outside Tel Aviv.
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The Palestinians strongly oppose unilateral Israeli moves, saying that actions must be taken on the basis of agreements.
"Sharon's announcements regarding Palestinian territory have no validity whatsoever," the Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, said in remarks before Mr. Sharon spoke.
But Mr. Sharon said Israel was prepared to take one-sided actions that would involve drawing "new conditional security lines" and removing some more isolated settlements. He refused to name any settlements that might be dismantled but said, "Israel will not remain in all those locations where we are today."
Mr. Sharon also declined to define the security line, though much of it would likely be along the barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank.
"The security line will not be the final border of the state of Israel," the prime minister said. "But until the implementation of the road map, that is where" the military will be deployed.
The Israeli leader said the Palestinians would get much more in direct negotiations than they would through unilateral Israeli action.
For the past month, Mr. Sharon has spoken in general terms about unilateral measures that Israel may take if the peace negotiations fail to produce any results.
The Israeli news media have reported that Mr. Sharon is prepared to give the current peace efforts six months, and after that Israel will seriously consider the unilateral steps.
Since capturing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, Israel has built almost 150 formal settlements where about 230,000 settlers live. In addition, about 100 small, informal outposts have gone up in recent years.
The current Mideast peace plan, which was introduced in June, stalled in August amid Palestinian suicide bombings and frequent Israeli raids in Palestinian areas.
Mr. Sharon and the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, who assumed his post in September, both say they are willing to meet with an aim of restarting the process.
But Israeli officials have questioned whether Mr. Qurei will have any real authority, believing that the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat will continue to have the final say on all important questions.
Mr. Qurei has been trying, without success, to persuade armed Palestinian factions to halt attacks against Israeli targets.
Mr. Sharon has shunned Mr. Arafat, who has left his battered West Bank compound in Ramallah on only a few occasions over the past two years.
Despite the lack of progress in political talks, the overall level of violence has been down in the past two months.
However, four Palestinians were killed today by Israeli troops conducting searches in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Israel's military said all four were armed. Three were masked men with automatic rifles who shot at soldiers from a rooftop, and were killed by return fire, the military said, adding that the fourth was hit as he ran toward troops with an explosive.
The Palestinians acknowledged that three of the dead men were militants, but said the fourth was an unarmed bakery worker who was shot multiple times while on his way to work early this morning.
nytimes.com. |
