Sharon Plans Security Buffer Zones
By Matt Spetalnick
Reuters
JERUSALEM (Feb. 21) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced plans on Thursday to create special ''buffer zones'' to protect Israelis from Palestinian attacks amid the worst outbreak of violence in nearly 17 months of conflict.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo condemned the move, which followed a day of Israeli reprisal raids that killed nine people, as an attempt to ''create jails for the Palestinian people within their cities, towns and villages.''
Sharon, under pressure from the right and left after a series of suicide bombings and ambushes, said in a nationally televised speech the new zones would achieve ''security separation'' between Israelis and Palestinians.
He gave few details but his comments were widely interpreted to mean he would seal off some Palestinian areas and might even put slices of Palestinian-ruled land bordering the Jewish state back under Israeli military control.
The right-wing premier vowed the Israeli military would not rest ''until the terrorist network has been destroyed,'' following a second day of fierce bombardments of Palestinian targets in retaliation for the killing of six Israeli soldiers.
But on the same day helicopter gunships and warships struck security targets across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sharon said he would make every effort to prevent the conflict from escalating into ''total war.''
Sharon ignored Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's apparently conciliatory gesture earlier on Thursday in which he reiterated his December 16 ceasefire call to Palestinians.
Palestinian cabinet minister Nabil Shaath said Sharon had ''offered no hope, no complete suggestions, and opened no way to ending the confrontation and heading back to the peace table.''
A U.S. State Department official said Sharon's plan could amount to the kind of unilateral action which Washington has opposed, but said the United States was reserving judgment.
PEACE EFFORTS IN TATTERS
The latest fighting -- in which 39 Palestinians, including two suicide bombers, and 10 Israelis have been killed since Monday -- has left international peace efforts in tatters.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, whose country holds the European Union's rotating presidency, called the situation ''practically (one) of war'' and said it would be hard for the EU to put forward any peace initiative in the current climate.
Sharon said the new buffer zones were intended to increase Israelis' security -- a campaign promise he has yet to fulfill since being elected in February 2001.
''We decided to establish buffer zones to achieve security separation,'' Sharon said. ''We decided to start immediately designating buffer areas and establishing obstacles along their length.''
Measures could include anything from building walls and digging trenches on Israel's border with the West Bank and Gaza Strip to expanding the network of checkpoints and roadblocks that already keep a stranglehold on Palestinian areas.
It was also unclear how far Sharon was prepared to go in meeting demands of rightwingers who want to retake slices of Palestinian-ruled areas to ratchet up the pressure on Arafat while guaranteeing security for Jewish settlements.
But Shaath said: ''If separation is intended to stop suicidal missions, it has failed. If it's intended to stop trade and communication between the two peoples, it has succeeded to the misery of both.''
SHARON DEMANDS DISARMAMENT
Sharon also demanded full demilitarization of the Palestinian territories as a step toward calming the conflict. ''Complete disarmament of the Palestinian areas is a condition for climbing out of the pit,'' he said.
Israeli tanks rumbled into a town on the edge of Gaza City in attacks that began shortly after midnight. In a symbolic strike, the army blew up the Voice of Palestine radio and television headquarters there.
Six Palestinians, at least one of them a gunman, were killed in an army raid in southern Gaza, Palestinian doctors said.
Israeli soldiers shot dead a gunman near an army post in the West Bank and a 27-year-old Palestinian trying to cross the Qalandiya checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Helicopter gunships fired missiles for the second successive night at Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, where the Palestinian leader has been confined by Israeli tanks since December. But he was unhurt.
''This is an attempt to make the Palestinian people and its leadership kneel, but they don't know that this people and their leadership are a mighty people,'' Arafat said.
The attacks were part of a stepped-up response by Israel after Tuesday's ambush that killed six soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint, one of the worst blows to the Israeli army since the conflict erupted in September 2000.
Since the Israeli sea, air and land strikes began on Wednesday, 25 Palestinians have been killed. At least 888 Palestinians and 273 Israelis have been killed since the revolt began after peace talks froze.
Reuters 18:45 02-21-02
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