RAMALLAH, West Bank, 24 November 2003 — The top Palestinian security council, under US pressure to rein in militants in support of a peace plan, ordered security forces yesterday to take firm measures to ensure law and order.
The Higher National Security Council, headed by President Yasser Arafat, said a committee would also draft a plan to help ensure the Palestinian Authority meets security commitments under the stalled US-backed road map peace plan. But it set out no specific steps to improve security, a day after Palestinian gunmen killed two Israelis guarding a building site for a controversial barrier in the West Bank.
In the West Bank city of Jenin, a spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group with links to Arafat’s mainstream Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack. “The Higher National Security Council has instructed Palestinian security forces to impose law and order in all firmness and to punish violators, in order to preserve the higher interests of the Palestinian people,” a PA official said.
The official said US officials had handed the Palestinian Authority a list of steps they want Palestinian security forces to take in accordance with the road map.
“These include collecting illegal weapons, banning the show of power on streets, closing down tunnels used for smuggling on the Egyptian-Palestinian border and searching houses to collect illegal arms,” a senior Palestinian official told reporters.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei, widely expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the coming days, has said he would not forcibly dismantle the groups and is pursuing, along with Egypt, a cease-fire deal with them.
Meanwhile, Sharon signaled yesterday he might uproot some isolated Jewish settlements on occupied land and then set Israeli-drawn borders for a Palestinian state if a US-backed peace plan failed.
Palestinians voiced deep suspicion of what Israeli media dubbed the “Sharon Plan” ahead of a meeting, possibly as early as this week, between him and Qorei on reviving the peace road map.
Israeli media described the plan by Sharon, a long-time champion of settlements, not so much as a peace gesture but as a possible bid to determine the borders of a Palestinian state delineated by an internationally condemned Israeli barrier.
The moribund peace process was jolted on Friday when Israel’s Channel Two television reported Sharon planned to scrap some Jewish settlements by mid-2004 and move settlers to southern Israel to make way for a Palestinian state.
A source in Sharon’s office confirmed such talk, but said it concerned Gaza settlements and much could change by next summer. Reporting details of what it dubbed the “Sharon Plan”, the Maariv daily said the proposal was a fallback in the event talks with Qorei over the road map failed.
