The Bush administration is threatening to impose hundreds of millions of pounds in financial sanctions on Israel if it persists in pushing its security fence and wall in the West Bank deep into Palestinian territory.
It said it would tell Israel soon that was considering reducing its loan guarantees by the amount Ariel Sharon’s government spends on building the fence. Israel needs the guarantees to borrow money from American banks to revive its ailing economy.
The 352-kilometre wall and fence, which will nearly double in length if Sharon extends it along the Jordan Valley, is estimated to cost about £1-million a mile.
The proposal for sanctions comes from the the state department. Officials said the secretary of state, Colin Powell, was frustrated by Sharon portraying his recent visit to Washington as a victory over the Palestinian attempt to persuade President George Bush to press Israel to stop building the barrier.
Western officials said the Israelis had tacitly acknowledged that they would have to drop a plan to build the fence about 32 kilometres into the West Bank to cover the largest Jewish settlement, Ariel, because of the pressure from Washington.
The US told Sharon that it did not disagree with Israel’s right to build a security fence to keep suicide bombers and other attackers out.
But it should not penetrate deep into the West Bank, in effect annexing Palestinian land, caging entire villages and establishing a de facto border which Palestinians were unable to cross.
That would threaten the road map to peace.
”Where the president has a problem is when the fence is no longer just on your land but because of the way it’s being designed or built, it starts to infringe and take over Palestinian land,” Powell told the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv last week.
”You see it going in ways that will make it very difficult to get to the next phases of the road map.”
Israeli officials said the government had yet to be officially notified of the threatened financial sanctions, and privately blamed ”rogue elements” in the state department for the policy.
Congress recently approved $9-billion in loan guarantees for Israel, with the proviso that amounts equivalent to the spending on Jewish settlements and other intrusions into Palestinian territory would be deducted.
The construction of the fence is one of several issues which have increased tension between the Palestinian Authority and the Israelis.
A meeting between the two prime ministers, scheduled for today, has been called off. Both claim responsibility for the cancellation.
Abbas said he was unhappy at the Israelis’ failure to live up to their commitment to release more than 500 Palestinian prisoners today.
Israel said it would free 342 this afternoon, but many of them are common criminals or were near to completing their sentences.
Sharon’s office said he had backed out of the talks after the shooting and wounding of a Jewish settler and her three children near Bethlehem on Sunday. – Guardian Unlimited Â