OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 12 March 2004 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday discussed his unilateral “disengagement” plan with Egypt and the United States. His foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, went to Cairo and got an assurance from President Hosni Mubarak that Egypt would secure its side of the border with Gaza if Israel decided to withdraw settlers from the Gaza Strip. Sharon himself held talks with envoys from the United States in another attempt to sell Israel’s main ally on unilateral moves which Palestinians say will deny them a viable state.
One Israeli source in the Shalom entourage quoted President Mubarak as saying after the talks: “We agreed on several steps to ensure the border from our side and to make sure that there is no weapon smuggling. I hope there will be no violation.”
“He said it was up to the Palestinians to guard Gaza and Egypt would guard its side of the border,” added another source, who attended the meeting but asked not to be identified. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher later told reporters: “Every country has a responsibility to protect and defend its borders... and we will assume, and we are assuming this responsibility.”
Sharon sent Shalom to Cairo to sound out Egypt on how it would react to an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which adjoins Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Meanwhile, an Israeli newspaper, saying it obtained a draft of the Sharon “disengagement” plan, reported Israel could scrap up to a fifth of its West Bank settlements and most of its Gaza enclaves if he determined the US-backed road map had failed.
A spokesman for Sharon said the depth of a West Bank withdrawal and control of the border between Egypt and Gaza after a pullback from the coastal strip would be on the agenda of talks with the Americans.
“We try to keep them abreast and coordinate with them all those moves, and hopefully at the end of this process we will have an agreed-upon disengagement plan with which the prime minister can go to Washington,” Raanan Gissin said.
Deputy US national security adviser Stephen Hadley, National Security Council Middle East chief Elliot Abrams and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns were on their second visit to Israel in three weeks.
The Maariv newspaper said the draft outline recommended evacuating all but three of the 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and uprooting four in the West Bank. Eventually, another 15 to 20 of the 120 settlements in the West Bank would go.
