Israel goes ahead with plans for border changes

The Israeli government has said it expects to begin withdrawing from parts of the occupied territories and redefining their borders to create an emasculated Palestinian state if there is no progress towards a negotiated peace settlement.

The deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told the Jerusalem Post on Monday that the government would withdraw from some settlements and take other steps toward separating from the Palestinians, on its own terms. ”This plan will begin to be implemented this year,” he said. The new national security director, Major General Giora Eiland, is working on plans for the withdrawal.

On Sunday about 100 000 Jewish settlers and their supporters rallied in Tel Aviv to protest against the prime minister, Ariel Sharon’s, plan to dismantle some settlements as part of unilateral disengagement from Palestinian areas.

Several cabinet ministers took part, including members of Sharon’s party, Likud. But as the protesters played extracts from old speeches in which he promised not to abandon a single settlement, Sharon insisted that Israel would not be able to keep all its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. ”Israel is a democracy. Things are decided not by demonstrators, but by the government,” he said.

There are more than 450 000 settlers in the occupied territories, about half of them living in or near East Jerusalem, the rest divided between 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Sharon proposes to dismantle 17 isolated settlements which are hard to defend militarily.

Although right-wing politicians in the National Religious party and National Union denounced Sharon’s policy, the test of their willingness to oppose him will be whether they stay in the government: both parties have cabinet seats. An opinion poll last month showed that 59% of Israelis back the plan for unilateral withdrawal, including giving up some settlements.

On Monday the Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, invited the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to visit Jerusalem to resume peace talks without preconditions. The invitation was made in a radio interview and dismissed by the Syrians as a ”media manoeuvre”.