Palestinians may seek unified Israel
January 9th, 2004
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s prime minister will bypass
conservatives in his party by not seeking approval from
Likud’s hawkish central committee for his plan to dismantle
some settlements and impose a border on Palestinians, a newspaper
reported yesterday.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia warned yesterday that if
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon persists with his unilateral plan,
Palestinians might abandon their goal of a separate state and push
for a binational Jewish-Arab state in Israel, the West Bank and
Gaza instead.
Qureia told The Associated Press that such moves would make the
drive for a Palestinian state a “meaningless slogan,”
and “if the situation continues as it is now we will go for
the one-state solution.” Such a state would soon have an Arab
majority.
Troops shot and killed a senior leader of the Al Aqsa
Martyrs’ Brigades in the West Bank town of Jenin, according
to army officials and militants. Troops also killed a man in the
southern Gaza Strip, hospital sources said.
Sharon has said previously that he would pursue his
“disengagement plan” if peace talks do not bear fruit
in the coming months.
However, many Likud officials consider dismantling any of the
roughly 150 Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and
withdrawal from any land there as anathema to their dream of a
Greater Israel.
Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war.
More than 230,000 Jewish settlers live in the territories, home to
3.5 million Palestinians.
Sharon has largely ignored party officials, and the Maariv
newspaper yesterday quoted him as saying he will not bring his new
plan to the central committee for approval.
In talks with his aides, Sharon said that “when it will be
relevant, I will bring the proposals to the Cabinet for
approval,” the newspaper reported.
Sharon pointed out that the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin
only brought the peace deal with Egypt to the party after he had
already signed it, the newspaper said.
Sharon outlined his plan last month, saying that if there is no
movement in efforts to end the more than three years of violence
with the Palestinians, he would implement his plan to separate the
two peoples. Sharon emphasized that the Palestinians would get more
land under a negotiated agreement.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia has been trying
unsuccessfully for weeks to get Palestinian militants to agree to
end attacks against Israel, hoping to leverage that accord into a
cease-fire deal with Israel that could lead to new peace moves.
Egypt has joined the effort, sending envoys to the West Bank and
Gaza to meet with faction heads.
In Israeli-Palestinian violence yesterday, undercover Israeli
troops shot and killed a militant from the Al Aqsa Martyrs’
Brigades, affiliated with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement,
near the West Bank city of Jenin, militants and military officials
said.
Al Aqsa identified the man as Assad Kahalila, 35, and vowed to
avenge his killing with attacks inside Israel. Military sources
said the man was shot while trying to escape arrest.
Also yesterday, Israeli troops shot and killed a 42-year-old
Palestinian man in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, hospital
officials said. Palestinian security sources said Mahmoud Qurad was
shot from an Israeli position along the border with Egypt.
The Israeli military said it was checking the report.
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