JERUSALEM, 22 June 2004 — Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud party yesterday it must decide whether it really wants to leave Gaza before he joined any new coalition.
Meanwhile, France said it was prepared to take part in an “international presence” after a pullout by Israel from the Gaza Strip.
And in a further sign of a gathering international drive to break the impasse in the peace process, a US Embassy official said diplomats from the Middle East quartet were set to meet in Egypt on Wednesday, at talks to be attended by the top US diplomat for the region, William Burns.
The quartet, made up of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, is responsible for drafting the road map, which paves the way for an independent Palestinian state by next year.
Peres, whose party is widely expected to enter a new broad-based coalition to vote through the Gaza pullout, told a meeting of the Jewish Agency that divisions within Likud were a stumbling block.
“Today we have a government without a policy and a policy without a government,” said Peres.
“We are ready (for government) but with whom? Likud must make up its mind whether to go back to the Greater Israel (policy) or go ahead with a great peace.”
Sharon now heads a minority government after the recent departure of four ministers in protest at the prospect of the evacuation of all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four others in the northern West Bank.
He has also managed to split Likud, many of whose members have long advocated control of the whole of Israel, including the Palestinian territories.
Around 15 Likud deputies are now openly disloyal toward the prime minister, furious that he ignored the results of a Likud referendum last month that rejected the disengagement plan.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barner, on a visit to Cairo yesterday, said Paris was willing to help over security in Gaza after a withdrawal of the settlers and Israeli troops.
“We have stated our availability to take part, at the appropriate moment, including through an international presence whose format remains to be determined”, Barnier said. His counterpart Ahmed Maher said Egypt “needed” France and Europe to play a role in the aftermath of the Israeli withdrawal, but said it was premature to say what that role might be.
In Gaza itself, a Thai worker was killed yesterday by militants in an attack on the settlement of Kfar Darom in the south of the territory. He died of injuries sustained in a mortar attack claimed by the Hamas movement, medical and security sources said.
The incident was the latest in the almost-daily friction in the Strip between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen. Israel hopes its proposed pullout from the Gaza Strip will lessen, if not end altogether, the violence.
However, a senior leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said his organization would not halt its attacks even after Israel evacuated the Strip. Zakaria Zubeidi, Al-Aqsa leader in Jenin, described the withdrawal as a “unilateral act which does not bind the Brigades and does not influence its decision to continue with the resistance”, the Palestinian Al-Quds daily reported.
Meanwhile, a majority of Palestinians believe Israel will not dismantle all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, as planned by Sharon, according to a Palestinian poll published yesterday.
Almost 53 percent said Israel was not serious about the withdrawal, slated for completion by end-2005. Only 19.6 percent thought the pullout would take place as planned, while 25.2 percent said the Jewish state was serious “to some extent”.
The remainder did not have an opinion. While 50 percent predicted the withdrawal would be partial, 11.3 said it would be implemented in full and 38.4 percent believed it would not take place.
A majority said Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority was qualified to take over the administration of the Gaza Strip, while 24.7 thought not and 30.7 said it was capable “to some extent.”
