BRUSSELS/GAZA, 21 January 2003 — Europe insisted yesterday that an international “road map” for Middle East peace remained on the table, despite the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon labeling it a non-starter. The European Union’s executive Commission also hit back at remarks by Sharon accusing the EU of siding with the Palestinians against Israel.
Sharon told the US magazine Newsweek that the diplomatic “quartet” seeking peace in the Middle East, grouping the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the EU, was destined to fail. “Oh, the quartet is nothing! Don’t take it seriously!” he said, rejecting the quartet’s plan for a Palestinian state to be established by 2005.
But European Commission spokeswoman Emma Udwin said the quartet “remains a very useful tool in trying to find a way out of the current situation and the fruitless killing that continues”. Last month, Sharon persuaded Washington to push for a delay in drafting a final version of the road map until after Israeli elections on Jan. 28, despite EU demands that a final draft be agreed upon as quickly as possible. “It has not, however, been abandoned. It is still there,” Udwin insisted.
Sharon also criticized EU countries for failing to back his calls for Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to be removed from any position of influence. “They do not understand that in order to move peace forward, Arafat should be removed from any influential position. The United States, maybe Russia, understand this,” he said.
Udwin retorted: “The support that we give to the Palestinian Authority is designed to enhance Israel’s security, rather than the reverse, and we deny that we are in any sense unbalanced or that we fail to understand the situation.”
Meanwhile, Israeli troops raided the Al-Quds Open University in the central West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday afternoon, Palestinian sources reported. The troops gathered all students and staff in one room and checked their identity cards, but arrested no one and also searched the building, which is located on the outskirts of Ramallah and contains mainly offices and a few lecture halls.
In another development, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher met in Cairo yesterday with a delegation of Arab Israelis who expressed fears that Sharon would win elections. In a statement carried by Egypt’s state-run news agency MENA, Abdel Wahab Darawesh, president of the Arab Democratic Party, said the talks with Maher focused on the situation ahead of Israel’s elections.
He expressed the fear that “the elections will result in the return to power of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.” “Sharon might return as head of a narrow, fascist government, which would allow the peace camp to form a strong opposition, but what would be worse is his return to power as head of a national unity government with Labor,” he said.
Darawesh expressed the “hope that a greater number of Arab deputies will be elected to the next Knesset,” or parliament. The deputy of the Arab Democratic Party, Taleb Saneh, meanwhile, said the elections would constitute “a kind of referendum on the future of the region” and urged “Arab voters to take part massively in the elections.” (The Independent)
