PARIS, 10 May 2003 — Little will come of US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s trip to the Middle East this weekend because of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s resistance to peace efforts, a Palestinian minister said yesterday. Speaking in Paris, Palestinian Authority Minister of Foreign Affairs Nabil Shaath said Sharon — who has not accepted the international “road map” plan for peace — had indicated he would await a May 20 meeting with US President George W. Bush before making a decision.
“He is already undercutting, undermining Mr. Powell’s trip before it happens ... Mr. Sharon has already indicated he will make it (the Powell trip) fail,” Shaath told reporters after meeting French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. “I should make it clear he hasn’t told me that — it’s just looking at his comments as reported in the press,” he added.
Backed by the “Quartet” of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, the road map sets out reciprocal steps by each side intended to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. Powell arrives in Jerusalem today for talks the next day with Sharon and new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, his first direct personal intervention for more than a year to end the 31-month-old Palestinian uprising.
Shaath said Sharon had made it clear he opposed all aspects of the road map and would only submit to it under sustained international pressure. “If it were left to Mr. Sharon, there would be no chance at all... Without a serious Quartet and US commitment the road map cannot succeed,” he said. Diplomats say the Powell trip is a bid to lay the groundwork for the launch of the road map and acknowledge he may not get a decisive answer from Sharon on his backing for it.
Shaath said the Palestinians for their part would reaffirm their backing in principle for the road map but warned against Washington’s move to sideline Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom it accuses of fomenting violence. “Mr. Arafat is and remains our president. Any boycott of Mr. Arafat should be stopped in the interest of peace,” he said.
The Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli officials as saying Powell was unlikely to see significant security concession from the Jewish state and could only expect to squeeze an alleviation of the humanitarian conditions in the territories at best. As the United States tries to reshape the Middle East following the successful war to topple Saddam Hussein, Bush was expected to unveil today an economic plan aimed at stabilizing the region. The broad plan will call for setting up a free trade area between the region and the United States within 10 years, a US administration official said.
Previous visits by US envoys have consistently been marred by a surge in violence, which is not considered coincidental, and this time could be no exception, following the killing Thursday in the Gaza Strip of a member of Hamas’ military wing. The group has promised more bloodshed and the Israeli Army was on high alert yesterday.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops operating near the West Bank town of Ramallah yesterday arrested a member of Arafat’s Fatah movement who allegedly took part in the lynching of two Israeli soldiers at the start of the Palestinian uprising, army radio reported.
Adel Rahim Hamed was arrested in Silwad village, which lies some six kilometers northeast of Ramallah, on suspicion of having planned and carried out numerous shooting attacks on route 60 close to the Jewish settlement of Ofra.
The army also believes Hamed was involved in the infamous mob lynching of two Israeli reservists which took place in Ramallah in October 2000, just two weeks after the start of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
The Israeli Army also demolished seven houses in the central Gaza Strip following a failed suicide attack in the same sector the previous day, Palestinian security sources said. Israeli bulldozers destroyed seven houses in Deir Al-Balah at dawn — making 80 people homeless — and razed farmland in the same area, the sources said.
In another development, militants fired five rockets from the Gaza Strip toward the southern Israeli town of Sderot, lightly injuring one woman, following the killing of a Hamas activist by the Israeli Army, Israeli military sources said yesterday.
Israel’s military radio said the defense establishment was weighing a stronger than usual response to the latest barrage on Sderot. The rocket fire came hours after the killing Thursday of Ayad El-Beik, a member of the armed wing of the resistance movement Hamas, in an Israeli Army helicopter strike in Gaza City.
Citing a senior source from the army’s southern command, the radio said the army was considering a “considerable and severe response” but gave no further details about what that might involve.
One possible option was to clear the farmland just outside the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun from which the rockets were launched, which would involve uprooting numerous fruit trees, the source said.
