International > Middle East > Cabinet in Israel Ratifies Pullout From Gaza Strip" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/international/middleeast/21mideast.html?hp&ex=1108962000&en=344a3db2224556ea&ei=5094&partner=homepage">The New York Times > International > Middle East > Cabinet in Israel Ratifies Pullout From Gaza StripPrime Minister Ariel Sharon won cabinet approval on Sunday for two sweeping plans intended to reshape Israel's relations with the Palestinians: the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, and a revamped route for the separation barrier in the West Bank.
After months of fierce political battles, Mr. Sharon now has substantial momentum to forge ahead with the two initiatives, which should greatly influence the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the coming years. After the votes, he and his defense minister signed orders calling for Gaza evacuation to begin on July 20.
Amazing development. It appears Israel and Sharon really want peace. Sharon and his cabinat has agreed to significant territorial concessions on the West Bank unilaterally as a part of the Gaza pull out. Not surprisingly, this doesn't include any part of Jerusalem that I can see in the map. But north of Jerusalem, there is a narrow enclave that has been part of the Israeli claims since at least 1988 when Abbas negotiated an interim agreement with Israel that looked very much like the initial proposed position of the controversial wall separating Israel from the West Bank. Perhaps this the reason for the apparent Abbas confidence.
Not surprisingly, Sharon is concerned about a right-wing backlash.
Israel Concessions | Right-wing Backlash Feared
The New York Times
February 21, 2005
Cabinet in Israel Ratifies Pullout From Gaza Strip
By GREG MYRE
JERUSALEM, Feb. 20 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won cabinet approval on Sunday for two sweeping plans intended to reshape Israel's relations with the Palestinians: the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, and a revamped route for the separation barrier in the West Bank.
After months of fierce political battles, Mr. Sharon now has substantial momentum to forge ahead with the two initiatives, which should greatly influence the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the coming years. After the votes, he and his defense minister signed orders calling for Gaza evacuation to begin on July 20.
"The decision which the government of Israel made today was a difficult one, a very difficult one," Mr. Sharon said in a speech Sunday night. But, he added, the Gaza withdrawal "ensures the future of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."
The cabinet approved the Gaza pullout by a strong but expected margin, 17 to 5. The dissenting votes came from members of Mr. Sharon's right-wing Likud Party, including Benjamin Netanyahu, the finance minister, and Natan Sharansky, the minister for Jerusalem affairs.
"It is a dramatic and far-reaching step which is being taken on a unilateral basis, without linking it to any concession on the other side," Mr. Sharansky said in explaining his vote. "I believe that every step in a peace process, if it is to succeed, must be connected to democratic reform in the Palestinian Authority."
The decisions came at a time of hope for the region. Less that two weeks ago, in the highest-level meeting between the Palestinians and Israelis in four years, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Mr. Sharon declared a truce intended to end more than four years of fighting.
Mr. Sharon believes that evacuating settlers from Gaza is a painful necessity; Palestinians outnumber Jewish settlers 150 to 1 in that coastal territory.
Since Mr. Sharon proposed the withdrawal a little more than a year ago, it has passed several layers of votes in the cabinet and Parliament. This was the final major approval needed, though opponents in Parliament could use a budget vote next month to complicate the plan's enactment.
At the same time, Mr. Sharon wants to complete the West Bank separation barrier, which is intended to prevent Palestinian attacks, while consolidating Israel's control over the large settlement blocs.
The barrier's route has been revised following an Israeli court order last year, saying it imposed too many hardships on Palestinian civilians. The new path would, Israeli officials said, reduce the amount of West Bank land on the Israeli side of the barrier to 7 percent from 15 percent. It passed 20 to 1.
But Palestinians still view the move as a land grab and an attempt by Mr. Sharon to unilaterally set a future border on territory they want for a state. "I think most Palestinians now believe that the Israelis will be leaving Gaza," said Mokhaimer Abu Sada, a political science professor at Al Azhar University in Gaza City. "But at what price? Sharon is leaving Gaza, but he is taking Palestinian land in the West Bank. I think the trade-off is quite clear."
Mr. Sharon conceived his initiatives as unilateral moves and shunned Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader who died in November. It is not clear whether Mr. Sharon will be willing to work closely with Mr. Abbas, though the Israeli leader said last week that his ministers should begin to coordinate with the Palestinians on the Gaza plan.
The Gaza pullout should give Mr. Abbas a lift. But Palestinians adamantly oppose the separation barrier, and its continued construction could greatly complicate his life.
Afterward, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said building the barrier in the West Bank, regardless of the precise route, would "undermine efforts being exerted to revive the peace process."
Mr. Sharon's plans involve actions he vigorously opposed in the past.
For decades, he encouraged Jewish settlers to establish homes in the sand dunes of Gaza, but he now is telling them they must leave. Mr. Sharon also resisted building the separation barrier, at least initially.
"I began my service for the state of Israel 60 years ago and I have taken hundreds of decisions, which have often been questions of life or death," Mr. Sharon said in a speech Sunday night. "But the decision I took today with my government was the hardest of all my career."
Given the demographic reality of Gaza, Mr. Sharon said he could not envision a future for Jews there, where 8,500 settlers live in fortified enclaves surrounded by 1.3 million Palestinians.
"I began my service for the state of Israel 60 years ago and I have taken hundreds of decisions, which have often been questions of life or death," Mr. Sharon said in his speech. "But the decision I took today with my government was the hardest of all my career."
Shimon Peres, the deputy prime minister, who brought his left-leaning Labor Party into Mr. Sharon's governing coalition, said, "We must make an accounting of what has happened to us over nearly 40 years, and how much it has cost us in human life, how much it has cost us in resources, and how much it has cost us in our international standing."
Four small, isolated West Bank settlements will also be evacuated this summer.
Israel began building settlements on land captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The only large settlement Israel has previously evacuated is Yamit, in the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel abandoned in 1982 as part of a peace treaty with Egypt.
Mr. Sharon, Israel's defense minister at the time, oversaw that chaotic pullout, which included soldiers tussling with protesters. Some settlers moved directly from Sinai to Gaza, where they have lived since.
A small number of the settlers in Gaza have agreed to leave, but most say they will stay, hoping that Mr. Sharon's plan will somehow fizzle.
Under a compensation formula approved by Parliament last week, most Gaza families will receive $200,000 to $400,000 to move, buy new homes and re-establish their standard of living. The settlers are free to move anywhere in Israel, or to a settlement in the West Bank.
But Isaac Herzog, Israel's housing minister, said the government was trying to lure Gaza settlers to lightly developed areas in the Galilee region of northern Israel and the Negev Desert in the south.
Meanwhile, the separation barrier, which includes electronic fences and concrete walls, is broadly popular in Israel and, Israel's security forces say, has contributed to a sharp decline in Palestinian suicide bombings and other attacks in the past two years.
But Israel has faced sharp international criticism. The International Court of Justice in The Hague, in an advisory ruling last July, said parts of the barrier inside the West Bank violated international law and should be torn down. Mr. Sharon's government rejected the ruling.
The government's revised route was its response to a ruling last year by Israel's High Court of Justice. The court said Israeli planners did not sufficiently factor in the needs of Palestinian civilians, who face great difficulties in reaching jobs, schools and farmland in many West Bank communities.
About one-third of the barrier has been built, mostly in the northern West Bank. The decision on Sunday focused on the southern West Bank.
The barrier will incorporate Maale Adumim, the largest single settlement, which has about 30,000 residents and is just east of Jerusalem. Gush Etzion, a large settlement bloc to the south of Jerusalem, will also be on the Israeli side.
The revised route will still include a large majority of the 230,000 settlers in the West Bank, as well as the more than 200,000 Israelis who live in the eastern part of Jerusalem, which was captured in the 1967 war and then annexed.
In Gaza, the Palestinians want the Israelis out but are demanding that the withdrawal be coordinated. The Palestinians say planned Israeli restrictions on the sea port, airport and crossing points will make it impossible for impoverished Gaza to develop economically.
A few obstacles remain on both measures.
The government must win parliamentary backing for the national budget before the end of March. If the government fails, new elections must be held, which could delay or undermine Mr. Sharon's plans.
Also, settlers and their supporters plan to step up protests and civil disobedience campaigns in hopes of thwarting the evacuation.
In addition, some liberal Israelis have teamed up with Palestinians to mount legal challenges to the separation barrier. Some cases are still working their way through the courts, and new cases could be filed in response to the new route.
In other developments on Sunday, Jordan returned its ambassador to Israel after leaving the post vacant for four years. Egypt, the only other Arab country that has a peace treaty with Israel, also plans to return its ambassador soon.
In Rafah, in southern Gaza, one Palestinian security officer was killed and another was wounded as they tried to destroy a Palestinian smuggling tunnel linked to neighboring Egypt, the Palestinian security forces said.
Israel has staged raids into Rafah to look for the smuggling tunnels. However, with a truce declared earlier this month, the Palestinian security forces are now deployed in southern Gaza and are increasingly active.
Also, the Israeli military announced Sunday that 500 Palestinian prisoners would be released Monday.
The Palestinians say Israel is holding 7,600 prisoners, and they want many more of them freed.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
February 20, 2005
Israel Gears Up for Burst of Far-Right Anger
By GREG MYRE
JERUSALEM, Feb. 19 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is increasingly denounced as a traitor. Israeli government ministers are receiving death threats. Protesters have accosted senior politicians and yelled at them during public appearances.
Far-right Israelis are growing increasingly strident in the months leading up to the planned withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip this summer. Many Israelis are drawing parallels to the period of inflamed passions that preceded the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was killed by a nationalist who rejected Mr. Rabin's concessions to the Palestinians.
Mr. Sharon, a supporter of the settlers for decades, has been the target of their wrath since last year, when he announced his plan to evacuate all 8,500 settlers from Gaza and several hundred from the West Bank.
Israel's security services have not cited any evidence of specific plans for violence against Mr. Sharon, but senior Israeli officials are calling for pre-emptive steps like detention without trial, which is permitted under Israeli law. The practice, known as administrative detention, has been widely used against suspected Palestinian militants, but only rarely against Israelis.
"Sometimes in order to safeguard democracy, we have to use undemocratic means such as administrative detention," President Moshe Katsav said this week.
The public security minister, Gideon Ezra, has even cited a prominent far-right campaigner, Itamar Ben Gvir, as a good candidate for detention.
Mr. Ben Gvir, an admirer of Meir Kahane, the anti-Arab militant who was assassinated in 1990, says Mr. Sharon is betraying Israel. While Mr. Ben Gvir says he will not engage in violence, he says there are others who will.
Mr. Ben Gvir and his supporters sometimes turn up at events attended by government ministers, and he recently harangued Education Minister Limor Livnat at an event.
"Expelling Jews from their homes - how can this be?" he shouted at the minister as he was jostled by her bodyguards.
Organized protests assumed an aggressive edge this past week before two important votes on the Gaza pullout.
On Monday and Wednesday evenings, protesters set tires ablaze in several main roads around the country and scuffled with the police who moved in and arrested dozens of demonstrators. A policewoman suffered a broken sternum when she was kicked in the chest.
"What hurts the most is that some of them called us Nazis," the policewoman, Gal Kedem-Biton, said of the demonstrators in an interview with Yediot Aharonot.
When Mr. Rabin was killed a decade ago, Israelis were stunned. But the possibility that another senior government official could be assassinated is now widely discussed in the media, the government and the security services.
Mr. Ezra says people like Mr. Ben Gvir are dangerous because they "are influencing youths to act against the law."
"These people give instructions in closed meetings and there's nothing you can do about it," Mr. Ezra said. "The only way to deal with them is to put them in administrative detention. I don't like it, but I think we are going through a difficult period, and I don't want clashes."
At a news conference this week, Mr. Ben Gvir appeared in front of a banner reading, "Administrative detention is political terrorism."
"If they lock me up in administrative detention, they should be prepared for hundreds of people like me who will sprout up and continue screaming against Sharon," he said.
Another far-right campaigner, Noam Federman, was placed under administrative detention in 2003 while he was being investigated on suspicion that he planned violence against Palestinians. However, a court ordered him released last year, and he is now under house arrest. He is allowed out periodically, and has delivered ominous warnings.
Asked this week by Israeli television if he considered violence against Israeli politicians legitimate, Mr. Federman replied: "I didn't take out Rabin. I didn't weep when he died, but I didn't wipe him out."
"It's very possible that someone will take out Arik Sharon," Mr. Federman said, referring to Mr. Sharon by his nickname. But he added, "it will not be from me or my close friends. We have our own plans on how to struggle."
Mr. Federman said that when the evacuation date drew near, the more militant opponents might try to sow chaos throughout Israel, rather than focus on Gaza, which will have a huge security presence.
Graffiti in several places around the country describes Mr. Sharon as a "dictator" and a "traitor." "Hitler would be proud of you," said one spray-painted message, along with "Lily is waiting for you," a reference to Mr. Sharon's wife, who died five years ago.
Several of Mr. Sharon's ministers have recently received death threats directed at them and their families.
"You will attend the funeral of your children," said a letter addressed to Israel's transportation minister, Meir Sheetrit.
Mr. Sharon speaks fondly of the settlers, and dismisses the threats, sometimes joking that he does not wear a bulletproof vest because they do not make them in his size.
The Yesha Council, the main group representing settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, is leading the organized opposition to the evacuation plan, and it says it rejects violence.
The council has arranged huge rallies against the pullout, drawing crowds of 100,000 or more.
But the council says Mr. Sharon's government is trying to vilify settlers by linking them to fringe elements, and it contends that Mr. Sharon is the one guilty of incitement.
"We are disturbed at the way Mr. Sharon and his spinmeisters are moving," said Yisrael Medad, a spokesman for the Yesha Council.
Referring to the threatening letters sent to government officials, he said: "I'd bet my bottom dollar these are from cranks and psychos. Its very troubling the way the atmosphere is being cranked up against us."
"We would like to have 100,000 people calmly sitting down in the highways," he added. "But in the atmosphere Mr. Sharon is creating, I don't know what will happen."
Mr. Sharon's plan to withdraw the settlers, which narrowly survived several previous votes in the legislature and his cabinet, was comfortably approved by Parliament on Wednesday. The cabinet is expected to give its backing on Sunday.
No official date has been set for the evacuation, but government officials say they expect it to begin in July and last for up to three months.
Security around Mr. Sharon is now extraordinarily tight. At public appearances, he is routinely ringed by a dozen or more bodyguards. Streets are blocked off in all directions.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
No comments:
Post a Comment