Talks With Syria Must Start From Scratch: Sharon

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OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 29 December 2003 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday any negotiations with Syria must start from scratch as he pushed ahead with a controversial plan to disengage from the peace process with the Palestinians.

Questioned about the possibility of a withdrawal from the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1981, Sharon said any negotiations with Damascus “will start from zero”, according to the prime minister’s office.

Sharon refused to go back to the position adopted by his Labour Party predecessor Ehud Barak envisaging a retreat from nearly all of the Golan. Barak had, however, insisted maintaining control over the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main source of fresh water, with a presence on a narrow strip of land on the eastern bank.

Syria has been demanding a resumption of negotiations “at the point where they were stopped” in January 2000. At the beginning of December, Syrian President Bashar Assad called on the United States to support renewed negotiations with Israel so as to normalize the two neighbors’ relations.

“Negotiations should be resumed from the point at which they had stopped simply because we have achieved a great deal in these negotiations,” Bashar told the New York Times. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said in the aftermath of Bashar’s interview that the offer to revive talks was encouraging but insufficient and set several preconditions.

Sharon, meanwhile, was pushing forward with his controversial “disengagement plan” from the Palestinians by holding first talks with the general he has tasked with its execution. The prime minister was expected to meet with Gen. Giora Eiland, from the military’s general command, after yesterday’s weekly Cabinet meeting, public radio reported.

Eiland is being placed in charge of a special department of planning from Jan. 15 that would be directly answerable to Sharon’s office. He will preside over a special commission which would also comprise representatives from the army, Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the Justice Ministry.

No date has yet been fixed for the commission to start its work. Sharon’s disengagement plan has been widely criticized, with the Americans warning that any unilateral measures must not impede the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

The US-backed road map peace plan, which targets the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005, has made little progress since its June launch. High-level talks have been frozen for more than four months and a much-anticipated summit between Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qorei has been repeatedly pushed back.

Sharon said in a speech 10 days ago that Israel would set up its own security border within a few months if the Palestinians did not start cracking down on militant groups which have continued their attacks against Israel.

A member of one of the smaller factions, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, killed four Israelis on Christmas Day in a suicide attack near Tel Aviv. Thursday’s was the first such attack in nearly three months and brought an end to the longest lull in suicide attacks within Israel since the September 2000 start of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Army’s shooting of an American and an Israeli peace protester has angered Israelis and sparked renewed debate over a controversial West Bank barrier and the army’s rules of engagement.

Israel says the barrier - made up of concrete walls, razor wire, fences and trenches - is meant to keep suicide bombers out. Palestinians condemn the barrier, which dips deep into the West Bank in some areas, as a land grab.

Israeli soldiers fired Friday at a group of peace protesters who tried to cut through a fenced portion of the barrier, moderately wounding an Israeli demonstrator in his legs and lightly injuring an American protester.

Although Israeli soldiers often fire at Palestinian demonstrators - both with rubber-coated metal bullets and with live ammunition - the incident Friday appeared to be the first time Israeli troops have fired at a Jewish-Israeli protester.

Hours after the incident, the army set up an investigative committee. The army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, took the rare step of visiting the injured Israeli, Gil Naamati, in the hospital . Yaalon called the shooting serious and pledged to investigate thoroughly.

By yesterday, the airwaves were clogged with Cabinet ministers, army officials and peace activists fervently arguing over the incident. “An order to fire on people that do not fire on you is a completely illegal order,” said Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service.