OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 8 December 2003 — Major splits emerged yesterday within Israel’s government over Deputy Premier Ehud Olmert’s call for a unilateral pullout from most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that won support from opposition leaders.
Olmert, already under fire from right-wingers after agreeing to EU demands to label the origin of goods produced in the occupied territories, also found himself the object of a hate campaign. Posters have appeared depicting him stamping boxes of produce with the yellow Jewish insignia used by the Nazis.
Trade Minister Olmert gave few details in an interview on Friday about which areas of the territories he envisaged being dismantled, but the Maariv daily reported yesterday that it would involve the evacuation of some 50,000 settlers.
While most senior members of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government have so far kept their counsel, lower-ranking ministers have been quick to denounce Olmert.
The hawkish Internal Security Minister Tshai Hanegbi, a member of Sharon and Olmert’s Likud party, described Olmert’s initiative as “as more dangerous for the future of the State of Israel than the Oslo and Geneva agreements together,” in reference to the now defunct 1993 autonomy accords and an unofficial peace plan launched last week. And fellow Likud minister Meir Shetrit said Olmert’s comments would merely encourage the Palestinians to put off meeting their commitments under the US-backed “road map” peace plan.
The leader of one of the junior partners in Sharon’s coalition warned that his party would quit the government if Olmert’s plan “moved from being mere words”.
“After three years of terror and 900 dead, unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) means fleeing from terror,” Housing Minister and National Religious Party chief Effi Eitam told Maariv newspaper.
“This reflects enormous weakness and signals to the Palestinians that with a bit more terror, they will get a state, without any agreement or arrangement or commitment on their part.”
In his interview with the Yediot Aharonot daily, Olmert said Israel had no choice but to accept the creation of a Palestinian state if “we want to preserve our Jewish and democratic character,” given the faster growth of the Palestinian population.
Olmert refused to detail which parts of the West Bank and Gaza he envisaged Israel withdrawing from. But he added that Israel “should comprise of a proportion of 80 percent Jews against 20 percent of Arabs,” implying a retreat from the vast majority of the territories. Sharon has also spoken recently of the need for Israel to take “unilateral measures” but has given few details about what he has in mind.
While the nationalist parties’ denunciation of Olmert’s plan was predictable, their room for maneuver is limited by the realization that they could let the left-wing Labour party into government by quitting. Ehud Barak, ousted by Sharon in the 20001 general elections, said that if the government adopted Olmert’s proposals, it would deserve the Labour party’s support. Current Labour leader Shimon Peres welcomed Olmert’s conclusion “late in the day”.
Qualified support also came from Likud’s Infastructure Minister Tzippi Livni, who said “our mission to maintain Israel as a Jewish and democratic and secure state in the Land of Israel will obligate us to give up part of the Land of Israel.”
An editorial in the top-selling Yediot said Olmert’s comments represented a defining moment for Likud. “The ideological bombshell which Olmert dropped this week will force the Likud to fulfill its duty to define itself in terms of what it stands for, not only what it is against, to chart its real roadmap as a right-wing party, to show that it knows where it is leading the nation.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of people took to the streets of this southern Gaza Strip city yesterday in the latest of a series of protests against the unofficial Geneva Initiative peace accord.
A crowd of around 500 people marched through the center of Rafah carrying banners slamming Geneva as a “black day for the Palestinian cause” in a protest organized by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.
