Arafat Belittles Sharon's Offer on Settlements
By JAMES BENNET - NEW YORK TIMES
ABU DIS, West Bank, June 5 - Shut out of a Middle East peace conference in Jordan on Wednesday, Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, dismissed a promised Israeli concession today, as skepticism on both sides and around the region vied with hopes for peace.
Mr. Arafat's criticism was an implicit slap at the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who has been trying to demonstrate progress toward improving Palestinian life as he lobbies militant groups to lay down their arms.
On Wednesday, after meeting with President Bush in the port city of Aqaba, Mr. Abbas declared that the armed Palestinian uprising against Israel "must end."
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised to begin dismantling "unauthorized outposts," a reference to some of the dozens of clusters of trailers set up by Jewish settlers on West Bank hilltops in recent years to strengthen Israel's hold there.
But Mr. Arafat said today of Mr. Sharon, "Unfortunately, he has not yet offered anything tangible."
Speaking to reporters at his compound in Ramallah, where Mr. Sharon has effectively imprisoned him for more than a year, Mr. Arafat said, "What's the significance of removing a caravan from one location and then saying, `I have removed a settlement?' "
Here on the edge of Jerusalem, in a Palestinian village that some diplomats in the past envisioned as the future capital of a Palestinian state, the doubts of Mr. Arafat seemed more prevalent than the hopes of Mr. Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen.
"They are laughing at us ? Israel and Abu Mazen," said Mahmoud Jafar, 28, as he waited in his van to pick up Palestinian commuters returning to Abu Dis.
As they come back from working, generally illegally, in Jerusalem, commuters here must scale a six-foot concrete wall, topped in places with barbed wire, before catching rides home from men like Mr. Jafar.
No one held big demonstrations for peace on either side today, the day after the summit meeting and the anniversary of the start of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, which led to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
So far the most energetic response has come from tens of thousands of settlers living in the occupied territories, and their supporters. They rallied against the new peace plan in Jerusalem on Wednesday night.
Despite the talk of peace, the violence continued on the ground tonight. Israeli security officials said that in a village near the West Bank city of Tulkarm, the Israeli border police burst into a house in pursuit of three members of the violent Islamic group Hamas after unsuccessfully demanding that they surrender.
The officials said the police had opened fire on seeing that at least two of the men were armed. Two of the Palestinians were killed and the third was wounded.
Although the Palestinian press also held out hope of progress, Israeli commentators were generally more enthusiastic. Several hailed the summit meeting as historic for Mr. Sharon's endorsement of an eventual Palestinian state and Mr. Abbas's call for an end to 32 months of Palestinian violence.
"It was as hard as crossing the Red Sea, but in the end the sense was created, despite all expectations, that, gentlemen, history is perhaps at hand," wrote Hemi Shalev in the Israeli newspaper Maariv.
Writing in Israel's largest daily, Yediot Ahronot, Sever Plotzker compared Mr. Abbas to Anwar el-Sadat, the Egyptian president who reached peace with Israel. Mr. Abbas's speech had the ring of "historic conciliation," Mr. Plotzker wrote, adding: "He did something unusual for Arab and Palestinian politicians: he took responsibility. He admitted guilt. He stopped playing the perpetual victim."
But on the Israeli side, skepticism ran high about the ability of Mr. Abbas to deliver on his commitments. Palestinian officials said Mr. Abbas told President Bush on Thursday that he needed two more weeks to work out a truce with Hamas and other militant groups, who continued today to reject the idea of surrendering their arms.
"I think he's going to do his best by peaceful means, by persuasion," said Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. "But something will happen, and when it does he will be put to the test. At that point he'll have to do something more than just say to these groups, `Please stop.' "
Around the region, the Arab press also expressed a cautious optimism. But the sincerity of President Bush and Mr. Sharon about putting the peace plan into action was widely questioned.
In the pan-Arab daily Asharq al Awsat, Abderrahman al-Rashed said militants should not try to obstruct the potential peace with violence: "They must not try to destroy the talks now, thereby destroying the chance to prove that their suspicions were right, or that the other side's promises were sincere."
In Aqaba, Mr. Sharon said that as "all parties perform their obligations" to stop violence, "we will seek to restore normal Palestinian life." Israeli security officials say they cannot remove checkpoints or tear down walls like the one here until they are sure the Palestinian leadership is stopping suicide bombers.
But many workers of Abu Dis view the wall as a twice-daily reminder that Israel is the one obstructing peace, and they said they did not expect the barrier to disappear.
From his grocery store, Wasef Izhiman, 55, can see his sister's house on the Jerusalem side. But he is missing a leg and says he cannot manage the climb.
"It will be a repetition of Oslo," he said of the peace plan. "The moment we try to pick the fruits as Palestinians, they will cancel everything."
The workers who clambered over the wall this afternoon included a a carpenter who gave his name only as Ali Mahmoud, 22, and he said he had not followed the news of the summit meeting. But he said he had hopes that this peace plan might be different. "They like Abu Mazen, so they may deliver to Abu Mazen," he said of the Israelis. "The most important thing to me is to open the roads."
nytimes.com |
