LUXEMBOURG, 31 May 2005 — A meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas could be held “in a very short time” to discuss the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said yesterday. “It might take place in a very short time, in a few weeks,” said Shalom, speaking at an EU-Mediterranean conference here.
“If it would take place, I think it would take place maybe in Jerusalem”, he added. Israel plans to uproot the more than 8,000 Jewish settlers living in Gaza and four northern West Bank settlements from mid-August, ending a 38-year occupation over the Palestinian land in question.
However, recent troubles have prompted senior Israeli Army officers to call for a delay in the pullout. Shalom said the talks, which remain to be confirmed, would have the aim “to coordinate the implementation of this disengagement plan”.
“There is good will from both sides to have this meeting”, he said. On May 21, Abbas announced he would meet Sharon in June for the first time in three months, but Israel swiftly denied any date had been set.
The idea of a meeting is not new. Abbas and Sharon had agreed in April to the principle of a new encounter, without fixing a date. The two leaders last met in early February, in Egypt’s Red Sea resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh, where they announced an end to four years of hostilities, but the cease-fire that has proved to be fragile.
Shalom’s comments come amid growing fears yesterday for the shaky truce after two Palestinian sisters were wounded by a rocket fired from an Israeli drone pursuing Islamic Jihad activists in the Gaza Strip. It was the second such aerial attack in the occupied territory in two weeks, with Israel repeatedly accusing Abbas of failing to crack down on militants, putting serious pressure on the de facto truce. Palestinian medical sources said the two victims, sisters aged 19 and 32, were in a serious condition following the late Sunday attack near the sprawling Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
An Israeli military source said the attack targeted two rocket launchers on the outskirts of Jabaliya, which two Palestinian activists were preparing to activate from a distance. A spokesman for the armed wing of Islamic Jihad said activists fired two shells at a Jewish settlement in the area before the Israeli drone fired three rockets in their direction and the activists managed to escape.
