RAMALLAH, 20 November 2003 — The UN Security Council voted unanimously yesterday for a Russian-drafted resolution backing the stalled Middle East road map to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The measure endorses the performance-based peace plan, formulated by the “quartet” of advisers on the Middle East — Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations. It “calls on the parties to fulfill their obligations under the road map in cooperation with the quartet and to achieve the vision of two states.”
Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush toughened his criticism of Israel yesterday, urging it not to prejudice final peace talks with its construction of a huge security barrier in Palestinian territory.
Israel instantly spurned the appeal by its closest ally, insisting work would not stop on the West Bank barrier it says is needed to stop suicide bombers and other militants from attacking the Jewish state.
“Israel should freeze settlement construction, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and not prejudice final negotiations with the placement of walls and fences,” Bush said in a London speech.
Saeb Erekat, Palestinian minister for negotiations, said: “The important thing in President Bush’s speech is that he called upon the Israeli government to stop building the apartheid wall because it pre-empts the negotiations. We call upon President Bush to make the Israeli government stop building the wall immediately.”
Also yesterday, a gunman wounded five people before being shot dead at the Israel-Jordan border, as Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei held talks designed to secure a new cease-fire. A truck driver from the northeastern town of Zarqa opened fire at tourists from Ecuador in a transit area near Israel’s Red Sea resort of Eilat.
Sources at the Soroka hospital in Beersheba said that one of the victims, a woman, later died of her wounds.
Qorei, who announced last week when his new government was sworn in that reaching a truce would be his priority, met with the National and Islamic Forces, an umbrella organization including the radical Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups.
In brief comments to reporters, Qorei said that any truce “would not be a unilateral truce for free but a cease-fire reciprocated on certain conditions. Our people are victims of (Israeli) aggression and this must stop.”
