Israel Wasting Time, Says Arafat

Egypt’s Proposals Have Int’l Support, Palestinian Factions Critical

09/06/2004

Palestine Media Center – PMC

President Yaser Arafat said on Tuesday Israel is stalling an Egyptian initiative designed to break the peace process deadlock as he backed Egypt’s proposals, which include reforms to Palestinian security forces, amidst international support coupled with criticism by Palestinian national and Islamic factions.

Meanwhile, European Commission chief Romano Prodi warned that the Middle East would never know peace without a solution to “the mother of all conflicts” raging between Israel and the Palestinians.

“As you can see we have accepted what was offered by our brothers in Egypt but they (the Israelis) declared that they will return to vote on every step and that they will start the first step next year,” Arafat told reporters at his besieged headquarters in the West bank city of Ramallah.

The Israeli Cabinet decided on Sunday to postpone a vote on the evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip until next March.

“Any (Israeli) withdrawal from Gaza should be part of the roadmap,” Arafat added.

Egypt offered to help revamp the Palestinian security forces that were very badly damaged by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), mainly following their reoccupation of the West Bank in April 2002, to fill a vacuum once Israel removes the illegal Jewish settlements from the occupied land, and proposed a ceasefire on all sides as well as the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue in order to kick-start negotiations.

Cairo last month offered to send up to 200 experts to Gaza to retrain Palestinian security services.

“We are ready to start sending in advisers before a withdrawal to prepare the ground,” an Egyptian diplomatic source told Reuters Tuesday.

The Egyptians want Israel to cease deadly military onslaughts and extra-judicial assassinations targeting leading Palestinian anti-occupation activists, permit a rebuilding of Gaza’s seaport and airport, withdraw fully from the territory and stop sealing it off by land and sea, and secure a safe corridor linking the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

“Right now, disengagement does not provide for these steps,” the Egyptian diplomat said, noting in particular Sharon’s intention to keep armed forces inside Gaza’s border strip with Egypt after settlements are evacuated, Reuters added.

“Gaza must not be left as a big prison. Palestinians need to be able to move and work and trade. To limit the possibility of further violence by the various militant groups, Palestinians must be convinced their lives are changing for the better,” the diplomat said.

“We have also told the Israelis that if they stay in the border zone it will be a point of friction with Palestinians, and we do not want to be a part of such friction,” he added.

Palestinian Minister for Foreign Affairs Nabil Sha’ath said Wednesday that the Egyptian plan is conditioned upon a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip.

“Egypt cannot play a fruitful role without a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip including what is known as the Salahuddin (Philadelphi) strip on the Palestinian -Egyptian borders,” he told the independent Palestinian weekly The Jerusalem Times.

Minister of Negotiations Affairs, Saeb Erekat, said Egypt presented the initiative as part of an effort to help implement the UN-adopted “roadmap” for peace.

“The Egyptian initiative is not a security plan; it is the outcome of the Egyptian efforts that aim at implementing the roadmap peace plan and halt the violence against Palestinians,” Erekat told The Jerusalem Times.

Egypt’s Initiative Has International Support: Roed-Larsen

Separately, the UN Middle East coordinator Terje Roed-Larsen said Tuesday that the Egyptian initiative has international support.

“Egypt has the full support of the key players on the international scene for its initiative and is playing a central role” in the Middle East, Roed-Larsen told reporters after talks in Cairo with Arab League chief Amre Mousa.

Roed-Larsen said he discussed with Mousa Israel’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, adding that the United Nations had “favorably welcomed” the pullout.

Roed-Larsen’s visit came on the heels of another made by Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom.

Shalom said in Cairo that Egypt had agreed to play a key role in maintaining order in the Gaza Strip after a withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlements.

“We are working very closely with the Egyptian authorities in order to impose law and order in Gaza during the process” of withdrawal “and on the day after,” Shalom said at a press conference in Cairo Monday.

Sharon Loses Parliamentary Majority

However, Arafat’s warning that Israel is stalling was further proven right Tuesday when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon lost his parliamentary majority after the head of the pro-settler National Religious Party (NRP) and housing minister Effi Eitam and deputy minister Yitzhak Levy quit his cabinet.

Eitam leads Likud’s ruling coalition partner the NRP, which has six more members at the Knesset. Yitzhak Levy is also a member of the NRP.

Last week, Sharon fired two other ministers prior to his cabinet vote on a revised version of his Gaza plan, which was approved on Sunday.

The Israeli Cabinet decided on Sunday to postpone a vote on the evacuation of the illegal Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip until next March.

The first clause of the Cabinet’s decision states that “nothing in this decision involves the evacuation of settlements,” the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported on Monday. The words “the evacuation will be complete by 2005” in the original plan were changed to read, “the intention is to complete the evacuation by the end of 2005.”

Prodi Rules out Breakthrough before US Elections

Meanwhile, the European Commission chief Romano Prodi warned that the Middle East would never know peace without a solution to “the mother of all conflicts” raging between Israel and the Palestinians.

Prodi argued at the sidelines of the G-8 summit in the United States that despite easing US-European divisions over Iraq, the Western world would never be secure unless a lasting and fair solution was found to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“There is only one conflict,” Prodi said.

“The mother of all conflicts is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The big conflict is still there,” he said, arguing that it was at the origin of all the divisions between the Arab world and the West.

However, he ruled out any Palestinian–Israeli breakthrough before upcoming American elections.

“If you ask me whether there is the high level of probability whether we can find a solution before the American election, I would say, no,” he said.

National, Islamic Factions Are Skeptical, Critical

Unofficially, the Palestinians see Sharon’s plan as a “fraud” and are critical of the Egyptian initiative.

The “Follow-Up Committee of National and Islamic Forces,” a group that includes all the organizations participating in the Intifada (uprising) against the 37-year-old Israeli occupation, including the ruling Fatah movement, slammed Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement” plan, and criticized both the Egyptian initiative and the PNA’s acceptance of it.

In a statement released in Gaza City on Tuesday, the Follow-up Committee said, “...the disengagement plan proposed by Sharon is part of a policy of deception and fraud whose goal is to imprison the Palestinian people in a mammoth jail in Gaza while controlling the sea, air and borders and simultaneously widen the occupation of the West Bank with settlements and the wall.”

Criticizing the Egyptian initiative, the joint statement said, “all efforts undertaken by our Arab brothers and friends to facilitate negotiations with the Israeli side must call for an end of attacks against the Palestinian people and its role and right to continue an armed struggle against the occupation, the settlements, the wall and to support of the right of return.”

The statement also expressed opposition to the plan’s implementation by the Palestine National Authority (PNA).

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

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