Ramallah | Friday
ISRAEL reacted coyly on Friday to a US call for its withdrawal from Palestinian cities seized on the West Bank, noting archly that President George Bush did not use the word ”immediate”.
The Palestinian leadership, meanwhile, embraced Bush’s new-found energy for the peace process, with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat telling CNN they backed the US president ”without conditions”.
Earlier, US envoy Anthony Zinni met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah and agreed to wider talks, one of Arafat’s top aides said.
It covered ways to implement the Tenet plan for a ceasefire and the Mitchell plan to relaunch the peace process, Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
”The meeting between President Arafat and General Zinni ended with an agreement between the two sides with expanded US-Palestinian meetings in the coming hours,” he said.
The meeting lasted 90 minutes and took place in Arafat’s office, which has been tightly surrounded by the Israeli army since it reoccupied Ramallah a week ago, he added.
Israeli officials welcomed the renewed US involvement in efforts to end 18 months of bloodshed but signalled they had no intention of calling off their week-long offensive for the moment.
They pointed to Bush’s wording and his decision to send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region next week as tacit approval of them taking a bit more time to hit at Palestinian militants.
”Bush definitely asked for a withdrawal, but he did not say ‘immediate’ withdrawal,” said high-ranking official Gideon Meir.
Meir said Israeli tanks and troops would ”withdraw after having cleaned up the nest of terrorists” hidden within the six West Bank self-rule towns occupied in a campaign of arrests that began March 29.
However, the Israeli army faces a race against the clock as experts say troops will leave Palestinian land before US Secretary of State Colin Powell arrives in the country next week.
”The army will continue its operation until Powell arrives in Israel,” Mark Heller of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies said.
”Sharon’s associates believe that the Americans are leaving a window of time for the army of a week to 10 days,” an editorial in Israel’s top selling Yediot Aharonot said on Friday.
The army estimated that operation ”Defensive Wall” would need up to four weeks to be successful. That has left many sceptical about the prospects of the US ceasefire initiative, with expectations of another round of suicide bombing in Israel after a pullout.
”So what will happen?” another Yediot Aharonot editorial asked.
”Probably what the army top brass believe will happen: the soldiers will pull out, the terror attacks will resume, the soldiers will go back in, until something happens, maybe a full-scale war, which will change the rules of the game.”
Sharon, whose popularity among Israelis has rebounded because of the West Bank blitz, has said the operation would continue.
”Negotiating before terror is subdued will only lead to its continuation,” he said.
But most Israelis believe Sharon will back down.
”Sharon, who responded to Bush’s statement with carefully contained fury, knows that eventually he will follow the orders from Washington,” Yediot Aharonot said.
”Israel cannot afford to refuse … America is its only supporter. If America moves aside, Israel will become the world’s leper.”
In his speech, Bush took Israel to task, calling on it to ”halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied”.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres welcomed Bush’s ”effort to bring about a ceasefire in order to enable the resumption of the peace process, which is in Israel’s basic interest,” a representative said.
”We heard positive words of the need to put an end to terrorism. We welcome US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s mission to the region and we will do our utmost for his mission to succeed,” she quoted Peres, the most prominent dove in Israel’s right-wing dominated unity government, as saying.
Meanwhile, on the Palestinian side, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would meet Powell.
However, he rejected Bush’s comments that Arafat, under siege in his West Bank headquarters, was responsible for his own undoing, having missed chances to make peace and ”betrayed the hope” of his people.
”We cannot approve of what President Bush said about President Arafat because Mr Arafat is the elected leader of his people,” he said. – Sapa-AFP