JERUSALEM, 30 November 2005 — Elder statesman Shimon Peres will announce today he is quitting the Labor Party and supporting Ariel Sharon in Israel’s March 28 election without joining the prime minister’s new party, Channel 10 TV said. Channel 10 said Peres, attending an Israeli-Palestinian soccer match in Barcelona, conveyed his decision to one of its reporters accompanying him on the visit.
There was no immediate confirmation from Peres’ advisers, who said earlier yesterday he may leave Labor and could announce his decision on his return to Israel today.
Channel 10 correspondent Gilad Yadin, reporting from Barcelona, said Peres had decided to quit Labor, which ousted him as leader in a Nov. 9 election, and “embark on a new political path.”
Peres, he said, would announce his support for Sharon and the prime minister’s new party, Kadima, today but would not become one of its members. Peres, 82, would also not run for Parliament in the March 28 poll, the reporter said.
“Upon my return I shall announce it. In my eyes it’s not a problem of parties but a problem of peace — how to create a strong coalition for peace,” Peres told reporters in Barcelona on Monday. Sharon, an ex-general, founded Kadima after breaking from the Likud, where he faced a revolt by rightist deputies who opposed Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in September.
Peres served as Sharon’s vice premier, helping him carry out the Gaza pullout, until new Labor leader Amir Peretz, a firebrand trade union chief, took the party out of the governing coalition last week in protest at social welfare policies.
In another development, Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan said yesterday that only Palestinian security officers and not EU observers would be authorized to block travelers from crossing the Gaza-Egypt border.
Dahlan was reacting to comments by an anonymous official in Brussels who said Monday that the EU observers posted at the Rafah terminal would have the power to prevent anyone from crossing while they await a response to any security concerns raised with the Palestinian authorities.
“Nobody apart from the Palestinian Authority has the right to prevent the passage of any Palestinian traveler,” the civil affairs minister said in Gaza City.
“We will not prevent anyone from crossing unless it is on the orders of a Palestinian court or at the request of our security services,” Dahlan added.
He described the role of the EU observers as “supervising the implementation of the agreement” between the Israelis and Palestinians, brokered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier this month.
According to the terms of the agreement, the border reopened on Saturday with Rafah under the control of the Palestinians and EU monitors overseeing security by being given real-time access to closed circuit television footage.
“If, for example, a traveler is carrying a suspect suitcase, it would be up to the Palestinian security to carry out searches,” he added.
Meanwhile, Israel has begun testing a major crossing on its new West Bank barrier, raising Palestinian fears it plans to turn the series of walls and fences into a permanent international border.
Parts of Israel’s barrier are built inside the occupied West Bank, which Palestinians want for a state, and encompass some Jewish settlements.
Israel allowed hundreds of Palestinian workers to cross into the Jewish state in the first two days of testing the crossing at Qalqilya, which itself abuts the “Green Line” 1967 boundary with Israel.
Israeli authorities deny the checkpoint and others like it are intended to create the geographical outline of a future Palestinian state.
The Israeli Army said the new Qalqilya crossing was aimed at easing passage while boosting security along the barrier, which it says keeps suicide bombers from reaching Israeli cities.
The high-tech terminal, in the shadow of a concrete watchtower and surrounded by razor wire fencing and blocks, has the physical trappings of a modern frontier post.
