EWEN MACASKILL | Friday
Israel was in near diplomatic isolation this week as United States Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared for his trip to Jerusalem to confront Israeli Prime MinisterAriel Sharon.
In a show of international solidarity, the United Nations, the US, the European Union and Russia turned up the heat on Israel by issuing a joint statement calling for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities and towns. Increasing the diplomatic pressure, Germany announced an arms embargo on Israel.
The manoeuvring came as a Palestinian suicide bomber breached Israeli defences and claimed eight lives and wounded 14 people in a bus blast near Haifa. Normally, such suicide bombings bring expressions of US horror and condemnation.
On Wednesday White House representative Ari Fleischer said: It reinforces for the president the need for all parties to step back, for Israel to withdraw, and for the Palestinians and the Arabs to stop the violence, stop the killing.”
Sharon, seemingly unworried by the imminent arrival of Powell, again ignored Washington and insisted the Israeli offensive in the West Bank will continue.
Visiting soldiers at Jenin, scene of the fiercest fighting of the two-week offensive, Sharon said he had told US President George W Bush: We are in the middle of a battle. If we leave, we will have to return. Once we finish, we are not going to stay here. But first we have to accomplish our mission.”
Hours earlier, at an Israeli Security Cabinet meeting, Sharon and his ministers agreed to keep the offensive going, including maintaining the siege of Palestinian gunmen sheltering in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
The Israeli government regards the offensive as a success because scores of Palestinian militants have been killed and more than 360 Palestinians on the Israeli wanted list arrested.
But Israeli confidence was undermined by the Haifa bus blast on Wednesday morning. It destroyed the argument of Israeli Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz that the offensive had created a lull in suicide bombings. It also raised fears about the scale of Palestinian revenge attacks when Israel does finally withdraw from the West Bank.
Some Cabinet ministers are pushing for Israel to unilaterally establish a border with Palestine, building a wall or fence between the communities, a view shared by Binyamin Netanyahu, the likeliest successor to Sharon as prime minister.
Netanyahu, even further to the right than Sharon, used a speech in Washington to reiterate his call for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to be sent into exile. Sooner or later [Arafat] will have to go. Not killed, but removed from there,” he said.
The former prime minister claimed that Powell’s mission was doomed. It won’t amount to anything.”
Powell is scheduled to meet Sharon on Friday, and there is a prospect of a tough exchange of views. Israel’s refusal to withdraw is becoming an increasing embarrassment to Bush.
Powell plans to follow up the talks with Sharon with a trip to see Arafat on Saturday in Ramallah. The US secretary of state refused to accept that Sharon’s refusal to withdraw meant his visit to the Middle East was in danger of failing before it had begun: My mission is not in the least in jeopardy.”
In Madrid on Wednesday Powell, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Josep Pique, Spain’s Foreign Minister, whose country holds the EU presidency, issued a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and Israel’s immediate withdrawal.
The so-called quartet” are laying plans for a peace mission to the region in the footsteps of Powell. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has offered to send British monitors to the Palestinian Authority, after the Israeli withdrawal, to check that Arafat was honouring promises to lock up the Palestinians wanted by Israel.
Blair added to the international pressure on Israel: No matter how strong the feelings, no matter how deep the hatreds, now is the time to pull back, to stop, to realise that the current strategy is going nowhere; that the time for violence is over, and the time to get a peace process going is overdue.”
Powell has been criticised for not flying straight to the conflict zone. His decision to visit Egypt, Morocco, Spain and Jordan has been interpreted as giving Sharon time to conclude his crackdown before the arrival of the high-powered US delegation.
At the time of going to press Israeli forces had swept into two towns and a refugee camp in the West Bank, but pulled out of 24 other villages, sending mixed signals ahead of the arrival Powell. Israeli troops entered the West Bank towns of Dahariyah and Bir Zeit and the Ein Hilmeh refugee camp near Nablus.
A Palestinian man was killed when explosives he was carrying went off prematurely near a taxi stand in the West Bank town of Hebron. Several bystanders were injured.
Humanitarian crisis grows in the West Bank
Israel must immediately open up the Palestinian territories it has invaded so that humanitarian aid can be rushed in to alleviate the suffering of the people trapped there, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said this week.
Giles Tremlett reports that Annan said he was appalled by conditions on the ground for the Palestinian population. He feared these were creating a humanitarian crisis.
He said that the refusal by the Israeli government to let humanitarian organisations into the invaded territories meant the full impact of the invasion was not yet visible to the rest of the world.
I am frankly appalled by the humanitarian situation. We face a mounting humanitarian and human rights crisis in the West Bank and Gaza, with enormous suffering for the innocent civilian population, Annan said.
I suspect that none of us will know the full gravity of the situation until we gain access to all the territories that are now a theatre of battle.
He predicted that when the full scale of the humanitarian tragedy was revealed people would be shocked by what had happened. Recent reports suggest that the bodies of dead Palestinians are still lying in the streets of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Red Crescent has warned of the dangers of an epidemic caused by decompsing corpses in the narrow lanes of the camp. Annan reminded the Sharon government that respect for humanitarian law was the most basic requirement for any nation that lays claim to democracy.
We call on Israel to fully comply with humanitarian principles and to allow full and unimpeded access to humanitarian organisations and services, they said.