JERUSALEM, 11 September 2004 — Israel can continue building in large West Bank settlement blocs without US opposition if it does so quietly, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview published yesterday.
While the US-backed road map peace plan calls for a settlement freeze, Israel believes it has tacit American approval for building within these blocs which it wants to keep in any future peace deal.
US diplomats say publicly that Washington remains committed to the road map. However, an announcement in August that Israel would build 1,000 new homes in settlements near Jerusalem drew just a muted US response.
“Yes, we can continue building in the large blocs,” Sharon told the Jerusalem Post when asked whether he had a quiet understanding with the United States on limited settlement construction.
Sharon said that if Israel were to build without fanfare the United States would not object.
“If you ask me what brings about these (US) statements, I would say only the provocations — when you have a cornerstone-laying ceremony, and hold press conferences and declare what you are doing, that makes it difficult for them,” Sharon said.
Meanwhile, settler leaders warned yesterday that Israel stood on the brink of civil war because of plans to evacuate Jewish settlements, but Sharon vowed to push ahead regardless.
The warnings are the latest in increasingly hostile rhetoric against Sharon’s “disengagement” plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four isolated West Bank settlements in 2005, a move he says will boost Israeli security.
Settler leaders charged that Sharon did not have a mandate to carry out the withdrawal and said carrying out the plan would likely result in a civil war.
“Two things could happen if this program goes ahead without being brought to democratic elections in Israel,” Eliezer Hasdai, head of a regional settlement council, told Israel Radio.
“The first is a mass refusal (to evacuate) among soldiers and officers in the army. The other is definitely a type of civil war,” he said.
Hasdai and other leaders first issued their warnings earlier this week in a meeting with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.
“If any one dares to come and touch my daughter’s grave... whether a soldier or the chief of staff, I will shoot him,” the Maariv daily quoted Hasdai as saying.
Asked about the comment yesterday, he told Israel Radio: “I gave an example of parents who have lost their children... and they (soldiers) come to remove their graves. It is enough that one bullet is let loose and this will snowball into a local civil war.”
However, Sharon vowed that his plan to withdraw from Gaza, home to 8,000 Jewish settlers and 1.3 million Palestinians, will go ahead despite these threats. “This plan will go ahead regardless, period,” Sharon told the Jerusalem Post.
Also, a petition published Thursday in the Besheva weekly contained some of the harshest language yet against Sharon’s plan. It called the pullout a “crime against humanity” and urged security forces to disobey orders to evacuate settlements.
