GAZA, 16 September 2004 — Israel will not follow the US-backed road map peace plan and could remain in much of the West Bank for an extended period after it withdraws from the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a newspaper interview published yesterday.

Sharon’s comments were his most detailed yet on his long-term vision for the region. Palestinian officials said the remarks confirmed their fears that Israel plans to draw its own borders and keep a large chunk of the West Bank, rather than negotiate a peace deal with the Palestinians, as envisioned by the road map.

In violence yesterday, 10 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops in two West Bank towns. Among the dead was an 11-year-old girl, Palestinian hospital officials said.

In an interview with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Sharon said that once Israel withdraws from Gaza and the four West Bank settlements, “it is very possible... there will be a long period when nothing else happens.”

He said that as long as there is no significant shift in the Palestinian leadership and policy, “Israel will continue its war on terrorism, and will stay in the territories (of the West Bank) that will remain after the implementation of disengagement.”

The road map was adopted by Israel and the Palestinians last year, but never got off the ground. The plan envisioned a Palestinian state by 2005, but did not spell out its borders.

US officials have said, however, that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza must end. President George W. Bush has since said that it would be “unrealistic” to expect Israel to remove large Israeli population centers in the West Bank — a statement seen by Sharon as backing for his plan to keep large West Bank settlement blocs in any future deal with the Palestinians.

Sharon said he will abide by his disengagement plan, not the road map.

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said Sharon confirmed Palestinian fears that the disengagement plan is a ploy to cement Israel’s control over large areas of the West Bank. US and European Union officials have assured the Palestinians that they would only back disengagement as part of the road map.

“Sharon’s intention is to destroy the road map and to dictate his long-term interim solution of Gaza as a prison and 40 percent of the West Bank within a wall, and this will not fly,” Erekat said.

In Nablus, troops surrounded a building where fighters were holed up, and a gunbattle erupted, Palestinian witnesses said. Five men from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades were killed in the fighting.

The mother of one of the fighters said her son had told her by cell phone he and his friends were running out of ammunition.

An 11-year-old girl living nearby was also shot to death, her family said.

Yasser Arafat’s chief adviser, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said that the killings would only prompt a new spiral of violence.

— Additional input from agencies