Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave his strongest indication yesterday that he expected to see a Palestinian state and was willing to evacuate controversial settlements to achieve peace.
In an apparent softening of his stance, Sharon declared that he was prepared for a ”parting from places” that have been bound up with the state of Israel.
”Eventually there will be a Palestinian state,” he told the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz. ”I do not think that we have to rule over another people and run their lives. I do not think that we have the strength for that.”
Sharon even named places in the ”cradle of the Jewish people” that would have to be given up. They are Bethlehem, Shiloh and Beit El, Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
”I know that we will have to part with some of these places,” Sharon said. ”There will be a parting from places that are connected to the whole course of our history. As a Jew, this agonises me. I feel that the rational necessity to reach a settlement is overcoming my feelings.”
He said that the war in Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime had ”sent shockwaves through the Middle East and opened the door to great change”.
He added: ”There is therefore a chance to reach an agreement faster than people think.”
Sharon’s remarks were welcomed last night in Downing Street, which believes that Arab opinion will never trust the west if the 55-year-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is not resolved.
A government source said: ”This interview is very interesting. It shows that there is a reality that people are going to have to face up to change and make decisions. The days when you could be intransigent and not face up to the issues have gone.”
Britain believes that Sharon is responding to the climate created by Saddam Hussein’s fall and to George Bush’s commitment to devote more energy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ”President Bush is deadly serious about this,” one source said.
But analysts are likely to be cautious about Sharon’s interview. He qualified his commitment to abandon settlements by making clear that Israel would not have to deal with the issue until the final stage of negotiations.
Sharon also said that Palestinians could not be granted the ”right of return” to areas settled within the original 1948 borders of Israel. ”If there is ever to be an end to the conflict the Palestinians must recognise the… existence of an independent Jewish state in the homeland of the Jewish people,” he said.
To the dismay of Britain, Sharon voiced reservations about President Bush’s ”road map” for peace which Washington is due to publish. His chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, is flying to Washington to discuss up to 15 reservations to the road map, which is designed to pave the way for a ”viable” Palestinian state in return for an end to Palestinian terrorism.
President Bush has pledged to publish the road map once Mahmoud Abbas, the incoming Palestinian prime minister, and his new cabinet are approved by the Palestinian parliament. Abbas yesterday appointed several reformers and announced that he would retain control of the crucial security post.
Sharon indicated he had some confidence in the prime minister. Referring to him by his more familiar name, he said: ”Abu Mazen understands it is impossible to vanquish Israel by means of terrorism.”
But Sharon was given a taste of the dangers of taking a moderate stance. Ezra Rosenfeld, a representative for the Yesha Council, the settlers’ pressure group, described Mr Sharon’s remarks as ”pathetic”.
”He has completely divorced himself from the history of the Jewish people. If you do not have the right to live in Shiloh and Beit El, you don’t have the right to live in Tel Aviv. The UN declaration in 1948 is not the justification of the state of Israel, it is Jewish history.” – Guardian Unlimited Â