OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 28 April 2003 — Israel’s Defense Ministry and the chief of staff are against a swift withdrawal of Israeli forces from reoccupied West Bank cities as a goodwill gesture to the new Palestinian Prime Minister-designate Mahmud Abbas, officials said yesterday.
“We have to act prudently and for the moment there is no reason to change our policy, since we are still a long way from having a Palestinian government able to reduce the violence,” Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim told army radio.
“In the past our efforts have been let down, which is why we should not hurry and act with a stopwatch in our hand under such a pressure,” Boim said.
Palestinians have called for Israel to respond to the key reforms and pull back from land reoccupied last year.
But Abbas’s Cabinet has yet to be sworn in, and he faces an uphill struggle controlling groups that Arafat is accused by Israel and Washington of allowing free rein to attack Israel during the 31 months of fighting.
Army radio said that top army officials wanted a detailed plan of the Palestinians’ proposed “fight against terrorism” before giving any order to evacuate the major towns across the West Bank which it reoccupied last June after relentless Palestinian bombings.
“There can be no free gestures from Israel,” a senior Defense Ministry official told the radio.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his part opened talks yesterday with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on which gestures Israel could agree to before Abbas and his ministers are sworn in on Tuesday.
They will also examine steps to be taken before US Secretary of State Colin Powell visits the region, a trip expected some time this week.
Powell is to leave Thursday for Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, US officials said Friday.
The two Israeli right-wingers were also to discuss the official presentation of an internationally drafted road map for peace, which would create a Palestinian state by the end of 2005.
With a Middle East visit by Powell looming, pressure was mounting on both sides to smash the deadlock that was eased last week when Arafat bowed to international demands to give green light to a new moderate government.
In a flurry of diplomatic activity, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi was also due to arrive in Israel for talks on the stalled peace process.
But Abbas faces a confidence vote in Parliament on Tuesday, with some reformists saying he has not gone far enough, and hard liners saying his line-up is the result of US pressure.
The hard-line Palestinian nationalist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), called on Parliament to reject the reformist Cabinet.
“We call on the Palestinian Legislative Council to reject this government imposed by US blackmail, pressure and intervention in our internal affairs,” the left-wing PFLP said in a statement.
Abbas handed the definitive list to Arafat late Saturday, officials said, with many old faces still in the line-up.
As focus returned to the protracted crisis after the war in Iraq, Israel’s leadership was mulling what steps it should take ahead of the expected peace push.
In another development, Israel’s high court yesterday rejected a petition by two human rights organizations against the Israeli Army’s use in the Gaza Strip of tank shells packed with thousands of metal darts, Israel Radio reported.
The petition was submitted by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHR-Israel).
In its ruling yesterday, the court accepted the state’s position that the weapon, using “flechettes” from the French word “fleche” for arrow, was a necessary one.
The Israeli Army argues that the use of flechettes in combat is not forbidden under international law.
It says it has issued special instructions for their use against militants outside towns, cities and refugee camps.
