RAMALLAH, West Bank: The Israeli Peace Now movement yesterday rejected an agreement between the Israeli government and the Council of Israeli Settlements in the West Bank on an illegal settlement outpost.

Israeli authorities on Thursday told the Israeli High Court that the leaders of the settlement movement in the West Bank would choose within 30 days a new site to build permanent housing for the settlers of the illegal settlement outpost of Migron, northwest of Jerusalem, between Qalandiya and Ramallah in the West Bank. The new housing will be located close to the present site, which is privately owned Palestinian land.

According to the agreement, Israel accepted the council’s demand that the Migron settlers be allowed to remain where they were until the new housing was ready for them. It added that the new site for Migron would have to be in keeping with Israel’s international agreements.

The state’s latest brief to the court came in response to a petition filed by Peace Now and the Palestinians who own the land on which Migron stands. The petition demanded that the state implement eviction orders issued against the settlers.

ÅeUseless PAÅf

Meanwhile, a highly respected Palestinian academic yesterday called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to dissolve itself if no peace accord was reached with Israel by the end of this year. Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al-Quds University, said: “The PA has no use. If we fail to reach a peace agreement by the end of this year, I believe it would be best to go back to the period when we were living happily under (Israeli) occupation.”

Nusseibeh added in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz that “unless a breakthrough happens by the end of this year, in my opinion we should start trying to strive for equality.

“Back in the 1980s, before the first intifada, I said there was schizophrenia in the body politic of the Palestinian people. It was like the head going in one direction, seeking independence and national identity, but the body was slowly immersed in the Israeli system, and I said it could not last because it looked like it would snap. Either the body would join the head so that there would be a civil disobedience campaign, or the head would have to join the body, so that there would be a civil rights campaign, to become part of the Israeli system.”