Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Monday said he would delay the forcible removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip until mid-August in deference to a religious commemoration.
Israeli law requires the estimated 8 000 Jews living in the territory to leave by July 20, after which the government is free to remove by force those that do not go voluntarily. But Sharon told Israeli television on Monday that he would put off the confrontation with the remaining settlers until after a traditional Jewish period of mourning ends on August 14. The prime minister declined to set an exact date.
Neither did Sharon say when the withdrawal will be completed, troops withdrawn from the Gaza strip and the settlements handed to the Palestinians.
The prime minister also denied a claim by the speaker of Israel’s Parliament, Reuven Rivlin, that once the Gaza pullout is complete he intends to divide Jerusalem and permit part of the city to become the Palestinian capital.
Sharon, who has repeatedly said he would not relinquish Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem as its ”indivisible capital”, called Rivlin’s assertion ”nonsense and a baseless lie”.
”I am the last person who would divide Jerusalem,” said Sharon. ”I have said this many times. I don’t plan to discuss any division of Jerusalem.”
The statement will be a further blow to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who has repeatedly committed himself to securing East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli prime minister announced the delay in the Gaza pullout to avoid inflaming opposition among religious settlers and their supporters. But the government showed it is also preparing for confrontation by arresting an extremist Jewish settler under a detention without trial law normally used against Palestinians.
The Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, ordered the arrest of Neria Ofen, a resident of Yitzhar settlement in the West Bank on suspicion of planning attacks on Arabs. The order permits Ofen’s detention until September 30.
The arrest was widely condemned by groups opposed to disengagement who called it the beginning of a witch hunt against settlers. The settlers council described the administrative detention law, which has been used to lock up tens of thousands of Palestinians for months and years without trial, as ”an instrument of totalitarian regimes”. – Guardian Unlimited Â