Weapons Transferred to West Bank; Rice Calls for End of Occupation
By Julie Stahl - CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
July 26, 2007
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office refused to confirm or deny reports on Thursday that Israel had allowed the delivery of up to 3,000 rifles and hundreds of thousands of bullets to the West Bank town of Jericho on Thursday.Israel, the U.S. and its Quartet partners (the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations) as well as Egypt and Jordan are working to bolster Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction on the West Bank following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip last month.There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity in Jerusalem this week with separate visits by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the newly appointed Quartet envoy, and the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt.
Israel allowed four Jordanian trucks carrying some 3,000 rifles and hundreds of thousands of bullets and other ammunition into Jericho on Thursday, the Israeli Internet site YNET reported.The weapons were then transferred to warehouses across the West Bank, an unnamed Palestinian source was quoted as saying, and nine more trucks are expected in the coming days with bulletproof vests and other equipment, he said.Olmert's spokeswoman Miri Eisen said she could not confirm or deny reports about the rifles. But she said that steps are being taken in the security, civil and economic spheres to bolster Abbas. This would not be the first time that Israel has allowed the delivery of weapons to Abbas' forces.
Last December, Egypt -- with Israeli and U.S. approval -- transferred some 2,000 rifles and two million rounds of ammunition to bolster Abbas' forces in the Gaza Strip. Again in February, there were reports that more weapons had been transferred to Abbas' forces in Gaza.And in June, when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip following a violent confrontation with Fatah, it confiscated thousands of automatic weapons, pistols, hand grenades, mortars and communications equipment, much of which had been transferred from Egypt and Jordan during the last few years.Former Israeli Ambassador to Washington Zalman Shoval said facilitating the transfer of weapons is less serious than some of the other measures that Israel has taken recently to bolster Abbas. Israel recently released hundreds of Palestinian security prisons and granted amnesty to nearly 200 more wanted Palestinians in the West Bank.
Nevertheless, Shoval said, the alleged weapons transfer is not a positive development. As has been seen in the past, the weapons are often turned against Israel in the end, he said.Some Palestinian experts themselves say the Palestinians don't need more weapons - they need democracy and freedom.Press reports on Thursday said Abbas' national security advisor Mohammed Dahlan has announced his resignation. Dahlan, whom many Palestinians see as corrupt, was outside the Gaza Strip when factional fighting broke out there in June, leading to the Fatah ouster and the Hamas takeover.
Occupation
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is due in the region next week, said Israel needs to end its occupation of the West Bank soon.I believe that Israel understands that it has obligations that need to be met and need to be met now, because the future of Israel is not in the continued occupation of the West Bank, Rice said in an interview on the U.S.-sponsored Al Hurra television station. The future of Israel is in building a strong Israeli state in places like the Negev and Galilee, she said. Rice was repeating remarks that President Bush made in a speech last week on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Newly installed Israeli President Shimon Peres and other Israeli leaders have spoken about the need to develop the mountainous region in northern Israel and the desert in southern Israel.Eisen said that Rice wasn't voicing a new idea, since both Olmert and previous Israeli leaders have voiced similar sentiments.
Shoval said that while Israel should continue to remove unauthorized outposts in the West Bank as it has committed itself to do, Rice needs to be reminded that Bush sent a letter to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which Israel interpreted as supporting its right to hold onto parts of the West Bank in a final settlement for security reasons.Israel cannot afford to return to the vulnerable green line, Shoval told Cybercast News Service, a reference to the boundary between Israel and the Jordanians on the West Bank prior to 1967.Abbas and his Fatah faction want to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a connection between the two entities that cuts through sovereign Israel. Hamas, now in charge of Gaza, wants to establish an Islamic Palestinian state in those areas as well as in Israel.
More than 200,000 Israelis live in the West Bank - an area that the Jewish people consider to be part of the their Biblical inheritance.The very demand to return to the green line is a non-starter, said Shoval. The basis for the United Nations Security Council resolution 242 following the 1967 Six-Day war was that the future borders of Israel would be secure borders and adopted through negotiations, he said.
While the Negev and the Galilee are important to Israel, they cannot be exchanged for the security of the state, Shoval said.Hamas has been less successful in the West Bank than in Gaza, Shoval said, partly because the Israeli Army is there and partly because the large settlement blocs provide a physical and strategic bulwark against terrorism, he said.
Israel on Thursday targeted a number of armed Palestinians, including two who were preparing to launch rockets from the Gaza Strip, the army said. Three Palestinians were reportedly killed in one aerial attack in the central Gaza Strip.More than 120 rockets and mortar shells fell in Israel this past month, the army said on Thursday.
Abbas Wants Israel Peace Deal in a Year JULY 27,07
Abbas Says He Hopes to Reach a Peace Agreement With Israel in Less Than a Year
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas heads a cabinet meeting at his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Thursday, July 26, 2007. Abbas said Thursday he hopes to reach a final peace agreement with Israel in a year or less.(AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) The Associated Press By KARIN LAUB Associated Press Writer RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP)
Share Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday he hopes to reach a full peace deal with Israel within a year, after Israel's prime minister floated the idea of starting with a joint declaration on the contours of a Palestinian state. Abbas spoke to reporters after telling an Israeli newspaper that President Bush promised him he would push hard to conclude a Mideast agreement before he leaves the White House in January 2009.Israel Gaza Strip George W Bush Salam Fayyad Hamas Islamic Jihad In the Gaza Strip, three Israeli airstrikes killed five Palestinians, including the military leader of the Islamic Jihad there. Later, four Islamic Jihad members were wounded in a firefight with Hamas forces at the scene of one of the airstrikes, following a dispute over items in the targeted vehicle, witnesses said.
Also Thursday, Mohammed Dahlan, a leader of Abbas' vanquished forces in Gaza, said he would resign as national security adviser, citing health reasons. Dahlan was widely blamed for the surprising collapse of the pro-Abbas forces in five days of fighting that ended with Hamas' takeover of the coastal Gaza strip last month.
A committee of inquiry appointed by Abbas recommended Thursday that 60 members of the security forces face trial for their poor performance in Gaza, said an Abbas aide, Rafiq Husseini.The Hamas takeover of Gaza has spurred a flurry of diplomatic activity, with the international community lining up behind Abbas and his West Bank-based government of moderates.On Thursday the government, headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, approved a platform that includes acceptance of all previous peace deals with Israel. The Hamas refusal to endorse the peace accords and renounce violence led to an international aid cutoff. The aid has been restored to Fayyad's government.
Bush is planning an international peace conference in the fall, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is arriving next week for more talks with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is settling in as the international Mideast envoy.Abbas was quoted Thursday by the Israeli daily Maariv and the comments were later confirmed by his aides that Bush and Rice told him they'd work hard for a final peace deal within a year.The Americans are determined to push the sides to reach a peace agreement during President Bush's current term, Abbas was quoted as saying. I heard this with my own ears from the president himself and from Secretary of State Rice.
Asked Thursday about the U.S. assurances, Abbas was evasive, but said We hope to have a comprehensive peace with the Israelis within a year or even less than that.
Yossi Beilin, leader of Israel's dovish Meretz Party, said Abbas told him Thursday that he wants to move quickly toward a final peace deal. If there is an opportunity now, then it's better to go for the whole thing than a declaration of principles, Beilin quoted Abbas as saying.Beilin said Abbas' time in office was also a factor. The maximum he has is another year-and-a-half. He does not have any intention to be a candidate for another term, Beilin said.However, Abbas also reiterated Thursday that he wants to hold early presidential and legislative elections, though he has not set a date. It's not clear whether Abbas would refrain from running if a vote is held soon. A potential successor as leader of his Fatah movement, Marwan Barghouti, is serving five consecutive life terms in an Israeli prison.
Olmert's aides, meanwhile, confirmed the prime minister wants to formulate a declaration detailing what a Palestinian state in Gaza and most of the West Bank would look like. However, they hinted that it would leave out the most difficult issues, such as final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees.In the Maariv interview, however, Abbas said the final result must be resolved first.It's likely that implementation will take time, that the timetable will be drawn out, but what's important is that the Palestinians know the final result, the end game, at the start,Abbas was quoted as saying.2007 The Associated Press.
7/27/2007
Senior Israeli official backs negotiated pullout from most of West Bank
Eds: INCORPORATES BC-Israel-Ramon.AP Photos By MATTI FRIEDMAN Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) -- One of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's closest confidants said Friday that Israel should withdraw from most of the West Bank in a negotiated deal with the Palestinians and that a previous plan for a major unilateral pullback was no longer viable. Vice-premier Haim Ramon, one of the politicians closest to Olmert, told Israel Radio that he favored reducing the Israeli presence in the West Bank to the large settlement blocs and that NATO forces could replace Israeli troops in the areas evacuated. In my eyes, the occupation of the territories threatens our very existence, our legitimacy and our international standing, Ramon said in the radio interview. The major blocs are in the northern and southern parts of the West Bank and to the east of Jerusalem. According to settlement watchdog Peace Now, more than 100,000 of the approximately 260,000 West Bank settlers live in these three clusters.
Ramon would not specify the scope of the pullout he envisaged, but said a plan floated by Olmert before his election in 2006 for a unilateral pullout from 90 percent of the West Bank was no longer a possibility, certainly not in one step.
He said Israel's 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was an option of last resort forced by the breakdown of talks with the Palestinians in 2000, and that the political situation has been transformed since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' split last month with the radical Islamic Hamas. That split led to Abbas' installation of a government of Western-leaning moderates under former international banker Salam Fayyad. The Palestinian Authority is now headed by two people committed to negotiations and fighting terror, Ramon said. We have a partner. The moment there's a partner, we must renew negotiations with him and reach agreements, he said. In an interview published Friday in the mass-circulation Israeli daily Maariv, Abbas praised Olmert and was upbeat about prospects for progress toward peace.
I am optimistic, I work with Olmert, the paper quoted Abbas as saying. We are about to meet every few weeks and move forward, he said. The two leaders last met July 16, in Jerusalem. An official in Olmert's office said Friday no date or venue had so far been finalized for the next session. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is arriving next week for talks with Olmert and Abbas, but her office hasn't said if there will be a joint meeting of the three. In an excerpt from the Maariv interview released Thursday, Abbas said both Rice and President Bush promised to push hard to conclude a Mideast agreement before Bush leaves the White House, in January 2009. I heard this with my own ears from the president himself and from Secretary of State Rice, Abbas told the paper. They want to reach an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in the next year. His aides confirmed those comments.
Aides to Olmert said Thursday he wants to formulate a declaration detailing what a Palestinian state in Gaza and most of the West Bank would look like. However, they hinted that it would leave out the most difficult issues, such as final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Abbas ejected Hamas from a coalition government after the group's fighters chased his Fatah forces out of the Gaza Strip last month in five days of brutal fighting. Abbas aide Nabil Amr said Friday that security officials and field commanders deemed responsible for the defeat would face trial or disciplinary proceedings within the Fatah movement. More than a dozen people have already resigned from their posts, including Mohammed Dahlan, a former Gaza strongman who was not in Gaza during the fighting.
There are those whom a court of law or justice will hold accountable, and there are those whom Fatah will handle, Amr said. He did not mention any names, but said some senior Fatah members could face disciplinary action. The Hamas takeover of Gaza spurred a new round of diplomatic activity, with the international community lining up behind Abbas and his moderate government. On Thursday, the government approved a platform that includes acceptance of all previous peace deals with Israel. Hamas' refusal to endorse the peace accords and renounce violence led to an international aid cutoff. The aid has been restored to Fayyad's government.
