JERUSALEM, 9 May 2004 — A 2005 target for a Palestinian state was unrealistic but the United States was committed to a road map for peace backed by the international community, President George W. Bush said in an interview published yesterday.
Bush’s comments in an Egyptian newspaper interview riled Palestinian leaders, who said the 2005 deadline was realistic if talks with Israel were accelerated.
Bush told the Al-Ahram daily: “I readily concede the date has slipped some. I think the timetable of 2005 is not as realistic as it was two years ago. Nevertheless, I do think we ought to push hard as fast as possible to get a state in place.”
The comments came amid new anger in the Arab world over the US role in Iraq, as details emerged of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Americans, and accusations Washington’s Middle East policy is slanted toward Israel.
Bush told the daily that it “may be hard” to achieve the 2005 target due to Israeli-Palestinian violence and the collapse of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’ reformist government last year. But he added the United States was committed to the road map and he would make this clear in a letter to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei who replaced Abbas late last year.
The road map charts reciprocal steps toward the establishment of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2005, including demands the Palestinians halt violence and Israel freeze settlement construction. But the peace plan ground into deadlock shortly after it was adopted last year due to persistent violence and noncompliance on both sides.
Rejecting Bush’s view, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said the creation of a state by 2005 was “more than realistic”, while Qorei called for stepped up peace negotiations with Israel to meet next year’s deadline. “Losing time does not serve the peace process nor the stability of this region. Therefore we think 2005 leaves adequate time for serious negotiations (for a state),” Qorei told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Qorei is scheduled to meet Bush’s top security adviser Condoleezza Rice in Germany in mid-May for what would be his highest-level session with US officials since taking office in late 2003. He said on Friday he would use the talks to urge the United States to revive the road map after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral “disengagement plan” to withdraw from the Gaza Strip was voted down by his Likud party on Sunday. Bush enraged the Arab world by announcing during an April 14 White House meeting with Sharon that Israel could not be expected to vacate all its large West Bank settlements or readmit Palestinian refugees under any final treaty.
Meanwhile, fierce clashes broke out between Israeli troops and Palestinians in the northern West Bank yesterday after the army surrounded a village high school.
The shooting erupted after some 15 Israeli jeeps and armored personnel carriers entered Qabatiya, just south of Jenin, and surrounded the school.
An army spokesman confirmed troops were carrying out searches in the village, but had no information on the clashes or why the school was surrounded.
A day earlier, two 15-year-old Palestinians from Qabatiya were taken for questioning by the army after they opened fire with a home-made rifle on an army base near a Jewish settlement just west of Jenin.
At least six people were injured, three seriously, in an East Jerusalem explosion last night, medical sources said.
Another three or four people were only lightly injured, they said. The blast destroyed a convenience store opposite a communal taxi stand. The cause of the blast was not immediately clear.
— Additional input from agencies
