UNITED NATIONS, 5 May 2004 — The diplomatic quartet for the Middle East said yesterday it welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip, two days after it was rejected by his Likud party. The United Nations, United States, Russia and the European Union threw their support behind the proposal to withdraw Israeli troops and settlements from Gaza — a move that has broad support among the Israeli population.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and top European Union diplomat Javier Solana sat down at 1400 GMT for what was scheduled to be two hours of talks.
“The quartet welcomes and encourages such a step, which should provide a rare moment of opportunity in the search for peace in the Middle East,” the four powers said in a statement.
“This initiative, which must bring about a full Israeli withdrawal and complete end of occupation in Gaza, can be a step toward achieving the two-state vision,” they said. They said it could also restart progress on the stalled road map peace plan that they presented more than two years ago, which envisions the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 living in peace with Israel.
Sharon put forward the “unilateral” plan for an Israeli pullout of Gaza after saying he had no Palestinian partner to negotiate with in the stalled peace process. But his extreme right-wing Likud party rejected the plan in a referendum on Sunday after a vigorous campaign from hard-line Israeli settlers opposed to giving back any Gaza land to the Palestinians.
According to polls, a majority of Israelis support his plan and Sharon could decide to submit the issue for a national referendum. But that would require new legislation in parliament for which he is not guaranteed a majority. The Likud vote was also a setback for US President George W. Bush, who had backed the plan.
Bush drew renewed Arab criticism for saying Israel could be allowed to keep parts of the West Bank and deny Palestinian refugees the right to return to land that was theirs when Israel was created in 1948.
Such so-called “final-status” issues are to be handled only through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians under the road map, which the quartet reaffirmed in its statement.
“Any final settlement on issues such as borders and refugees can only be resolved through negotiation and agreement,” it said. If Israel proceeds with a withdrawal, the quartet said that all land should be handed over to a “reorganized” Palestinian Authority in cooperation with the international community and Palestinian civil society. They also pressed both sides to live up to their commitments under the roadmap plan, including a series of confidence-building measures.
A majority of Israelis support his plan and Sharon could decide to submit the issue for a national referendum, but that would a require new legislation in Parliament for which he is not guaranteed a majority.
The former US foreign service officers said in a public letter they were deeply concerned by Bush’s backing of the Sharon plan and charged that Bush had cost the United States “credibility, prestige and friends.”
Annan has been particularly vocal in supporting the Gaza withdrawal plan as long as it marked a final end to Israel’s occupation of the territory, and sent Palestinian President Yasser Arafat a letter to that effect last week.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops yesterday detained the wife of Marwan Barghouti, the jailed Fatah leader, at a hearing for her son who is also in Israeli prison, the Palestinian family’s lawyer told AFP. Fadwa Barghouti, herself a lawyer, was arrested inside the military court at Ofer detention center near the West Bank city of Ramallah where her son is on trial, Jawad Boulos told AFP. But she was later released.
Nida Barghouti, a relative of the jailed MP’s family who also attended the hearing, said soldiers accused Fadwa Barghouti, 39, of trying to sneak a mobile telephone to her son. Israeli military sources denied Fadwa had been arrested, saying she had been taken for investigation on suspicion of trying to smuggle a mobile phone into the courtroom.
Qassam Barghouti, 19, was arrested in December on charges of having passed a grenade to a Palestinian militant in March 2003 that was later used in an anti-Israeli attack. His father, Marwan Barghouti, 44, is standing trial in an Israeli court on 26 counts of murder and also faces charges of heading Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah movement.
Human rights activists have asked Israel’s highest court to ban the Israeli military from all use of Palestinian civilians as “human shields” in military operations, a lawyer said yesterday. Israel’s Supreme Court barred the practice in 2002 after soldiers forced the neighbor of a suspected militant to knock on his door and deliver an ultimatum to surrender. The militant shot and killed the man.
