OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 13 June — Israeli troops withdrew from positions around Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday as remarks by US Secretary of State Colin Powell sowed fresh confusion over America’s Middle East policy.
Israeli tanks and troops also started retreating toward the outskirts of Ramallah from other positions they took up in the city before dawn on Monday. Tanks had encircled Arafat’s battered compound in the raid.
Confusion over US policy toward the Middle East deepened as the White House distanced itself from an idea mentioned by Secretary of State Colin Powell for establishing a provisional Palestinian state.
With President George W. Bush preparing in the near future, probably next week, to outline a possible road map to peace negotiations, Powell was quoted yesterday as telling the Al-Hayat newspaper that a provisional Palestinian state was a possibility.
In order ultimately to set up a state called Palestine, Powell was quoted as saying, Bush “knows that to get to that vision it may be necessary to have a provisional state, an interim step; it may take several steps to get there.”
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer made clear that Bush had not signed on to the idea. He said such a state was one among many ideas that Bush is receiving in his consultations with Arab and Israeli leaders as he seeks a way to end bombings of Israeli targets, end Israeli incursions into Palestinian areas, and establish a Palestinian state.
“It’s reflective of a variety of pieces of advice that people in the government are paid to listen to, from whatever source they may originally derive,” Fleischer told reporters.
A senior Israeli official said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Bush in talks earlier this week that he opposed the creation of a Palestinian state because it would destabilize the Jewish state.
The official, who requested anonymity, told reporters in London that Sharon had warned Bush that “under the present conditions, support for a Palestinian state would provoke the collapse” of his government.
“Mr. Sharon added that if he was obliged to accept arrangements with a view to the creation of a Palestinian state, it would lead ipso facto to early elections and a political freeze of around six months in Israel,” the official added.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers have set up a new settlement. Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported that the new “settlement outpost” was set up earlier this week near Sinjil village in the Ramallah area after a young settler was killed May 6.
