JERUSALEM, 20 March 2004 — Jordan’s King Abdallah secretly visited Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s ranch to voice concern over Israel’s West Bank barrier and plans to disengage from the Palestinians, a senior political source said yesterday.
The monarch flew into Israel by helicopter on Thursday and spent several hours in talks with Sharon before returning home. “The visit was meant to allay King Abdallah’s fears that construction of the fence will prompt a flight of Palestinians over the border into Jordan,” the source said about the controversial barrier now under World Court scrutiny.
Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, took in a large number of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 and 1967 Israeli-Arab wars. Jordan fears another exodus from the West Bank if the barrier makes life impossible for Palestinians, separated from their farms, schools and hospitals. Israeli sources said Sharon promised the king to block any such mass movement.
Israel says the barrier has stopped suicide bombers from reaching its cities. Palestinians say the bulwark of wire and concrete snaking into the West Bank is a land grab.
In the Gaza Strip, a powerful bomb exploded near an Israeli tank, overturning it and wounding four soldiers, during a raid on the village of Mughraqa. The Hamas resistance group claimed responsibility for the blast.
The Israeli forces detained two wanted Hamas men and blew up their homes, the army said. Doctors said 12 Palestinians were wounded, including a 12-year-old boy who lost an eye and a baby hurt by flying debris from one of the demolished houses.
It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes after the Cabinet approved military retaliation for a double suicide bombing that killed 10 people in a strategic port on Sunday.
Sharon’s meeting with the king was his first with an Arab leader since a Middle East summit in Aqaba, Jordan last June that adopted a US-backed peace “road map” charting Israeli-Palestinian steps toward a Palestinian state by 2005.
The former general’s tough moves against the Palestinians since the start of their uprising more than three years ago have added to his unpopularity in the Arab world, making any public meetings with him politically risky for its leaders.
Meeting at the Sycamore ranch in southern Israel, Abdallah and Sharon also discussed the prime minister’s plan to “disengage” unilaterally from the Palestinians if the violence-stalled peace “road map” fails, the source said.
