OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 3 December 2003 — Israel issued a rare rebuke to Washington, its closest ally, yesterday, saying US Secretary State Colin Powell would be making a mistake if he met the architects of a symbolic Middle East peace plan.
Vice Premier Ehud Olmert sharply criticized Powell for praising the unofficial Geneva accord, whose co-authors are trying to capitalize on broad international support following its launch on Monday at a gala ceremony in Switzerland.
Both Israel’s right-leaning government and Palestinian militants spearheading a three-year-old uprising have denounced the agreement, drafted by moderates from both sides, as “capitulation”.
US officials say Powell is willing to meet the plan’s co-authors in Washington later this week, a sign of growing impatience with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s foot-dragging on a stalled international peace road map.
“I think he (Powell) is making a mistake,” Olmert told Israel Radio of the expected talks. “I think he is not helping the process. I think this is a wrong step by a representative of the American administration.”
But a Western diplomat said: “Geneva is positive because it fills a political vacuum... Even Sharon is paying attention.”
Underlining the obstacles facing any new peace push, Israeli troops shot dead a militant linked to Fatah during a tank raid in the West Bank town of Jenin yesterday.
Palestinians say such incursions, including one in which three fighters and a six-year-old boy were killed in Ramallah on Monday, could provoke hard-liners to resume bombings in the Jewish state after a two-month lull.
The latest Israeli raids stood in sharp contrast to Monday’s festive roll-out of the alternative Geneva accord, which drew praise from world leaders past and present.
The plan, co-authored by Israeli left-wing opposition politician Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Cabinet member Yasser Abed Rabbo, has increased public pressure on both sides to start talking in earnest.
A spokesman for Beilin said the meeting with Powell, who has called the plan “useful” but no substitute for the road map, was expected on Friday.
Olmert said there was an “element of subversion” in the Israeli role in the Geneva deal because of funding the negotiators received from the Swiss government.
Like the road map initiative, the Geneva accord envisages a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territory.
But it goes beyond the road map by calling for the removal of Jewish settlements, division of Jerusalem and the right of Israel to decide how many Palestinian refugees to accept.
A new opinion poll showed more Israelis were warming to the accord, with 31 percent in favor and 37 percent against compared with 25 and 54 percent respectively in October, hinting at rising discontent about Sharon’s hard-line policies.
Arafat and his prime minister, Ahmed Qorei, have welcomed the Geneva initiative but stopped short of endorsing it.
