Israel Gears for US-led Peace Push and International Roadmap

27/04/2003| IslamWeb

With hopes for a breakthrough in the 31-month conflict growing, Israel geared for an international peace plan that Washington has pledged to release after the new Palestinian reformist cabinet is sworn in this week. With a Middle East visit by US Secretary of State Colin Powell looming, pressure was mounting on both sides to smash the deadlock that was eased last week when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat bowed to international demands to green-light a new moderate government.

In a flurry of diplomatic activity, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi was also due to arrive in Israel for talks on the stalled peace process.

But prime minister-designate Mahmud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, faces a confidence vote in parliament on Tuesday, with some reformists saying he has not gone far enough, and hardliners saying his line-up is the result of US pressure.

As focus returned to the protracted crisis after the war in Iraq , Israel's leadership was mulling what steps it should take ahead of the expected peace push.

Deputy Defence Minister Zeev Boim said he was against a hasty withdrawal of occupation troops from Palestinian self-rule areas re-occupied by last June after a spate of Palestinian resistance bombings.

"We have to act prudently and for the moment there is no reason to change our policy, since we are still a long way from having a Palestinian government able to reduce the violence," he told army radio.

"In the past our efforts have been let down, which is why we should not hurry and act with a stopwatch in our hand under such and such a pressure," said Boim, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud party.

Occupation army radio said that top army officials wanted a detailed plan of the Palestinians' proposed "fight against terrorism" before giving any order to evacuate the major towns across the West Bank which it reoccupied last June after relentless Palestinian resistance bombings.

"There can be no free gestures from Israel," a senior defence ministry official told the radio.

Sharon, who accepts "in principle" the international plan to create a Palestinian with limited sovereignty, was meeting Sunday with Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz to discuss which measures to allow.

Israeli public radio said the army plans to dismantle two unauthorised Jewish settlement outposts near Hebron in the southern West Bank when Abbas presents his cabinet this week.

The two sites are not inhabited on a permanent basis, it added.

Under the international peace "roadmap," which US President George W. Bush has said he will publish when the new cabinet is in office, Palestinians must cease all attacks and Israel must freeze settlement activity and dismantle recently built illegal outposts.

Abbas called for a suspension of attacks, and his appointment of a security chief capable of taking on resistance groups has raised international hopes for a revival of peace talks.

But many hardliners, in particularly Islamic groups responsible for resistance bombings, have warned him not to take down their agents.

Last Thursday, a group linked to Abbas' own secular Fatah movement claimed a resistance bombing that killed an Israeli.

And the hardline Palestinian nationalist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), called on parliament to reject the reformist cabinet.

"We call on the Palestinian Legislative Council to reject this government imposed by US blackmail, pressure and intervention in our internal affairs," the left-wing PFLP said in a statement.

In a new diplomatic push, Powell is to visit the region on Thursday, while Japan's Kawaguchi was to visit Israel on Sunday, with a trip Ramallah on Tuesday, officials said.

It was not clear if she would meet Arafat, who is still the chairman of the Palestinian Authority .

Israel, which saw in Abbas' appointment a major coup in its 16-month policy of sidelining Arafat, said it would not prevent foreign dignitaries from visiting the increasing beleaguered leader.

Israel and Washington want the autocratic Arafat relegated to a symbolic role to allow a new Palestinian leadership to emerge.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Palestinian man throws a stone at an Israeli Occupation Army armored vehicle, in the West Bank city of Nablus during clashes between Israeli occupation army and Palestinians. Four Palestinians were wounded, one critically, when resistance men and stone-throwers clashed with the Israeli occupation army, and the clashes erupted when two Israeli tanks moved close to the refugee camp of Balata.(AFP/Jaafar Ashtiyeh)