RAMALLAH, West Bank, 28 August 2005 — Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei said yesterday Israel’s expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank could bar the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and renew bloodshed. Qorei spoke to Reuters in an interview a day after an Israeli official said the population of Jewish settlements in occupied land had grown by more than 9,000 this year to 246,000 despite Israel’s removal of settlers from Gaza this month.
“The Palestinians are very worried about the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, particularly around Jerusalem ... this will destroy the possibility of a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza,” Qorei said.
Holding up a map of the West Bank, Qorei ran his fingers along colored lines that highlight Israeli building plans to link Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement Maale Adumim, which Israel is finalizing plans to expand. “This will renew the cycle of violence,” Qorei said. Palestinian groups have celebrated the Gaza withdrawal as a victory of their strategy and have vowed to renew attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem to end Israel’s occupation of these areas.
Palestinians worry that further Israeli construction in the Maale Adumim area, a strategic tract of West Bank land near Jerusalem, could later prevent the establishment of a geographically contiguous Palestinian state.
“What is happening is very dangerous... They are expanding the borders of Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley. Who will accept that? Who will accept swapping Gaza for Jerusalem or for the West Bank?” Qorei asked.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said Israel will keep larger West Bank settlement blocs including Arab East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Israel views Jerusalem as its capital, while Palestinians seek to make the eastern sector the capital of a future state.
Qorei said Palestinians welcomed the unilateral Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip, but that Israel’s evacuation of 25 settlements there and in the West Bank last week would not alone turn the overcrowded, poor coastal strip into a sovereign state. “We refuse the establishment of a state only in Gaza. Gaza is part of the occupied areas. A viable Palestinian state to live in peace beside Israel is only a state set up on the 1967 borders” said Qorei, meaning all the West Bank and Gaza.
Qorei said the Palestinian Authority had fulfilled a pledge to prevent violence during the settler eviction from Gaza, and now hoped US leaders would press Israel to renew talks on a “road map” to peace. The “road map” calls for Israel to halt all settlement building in the lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. The World Court brands all settlements illegal. Israel disputes this.
Responding to Israel’s insistence that it would not renew talks or discuss further withdrawals until the Palestinians disarm militants, Qorei asked: “Why doesn’t Israel disarm its settlers who shoot and kill Palestinians?” He was referring to the killings of three Palestinians by a Jewish settler in a West Bank shooting this month.
Turning to the issue of militants, Qorei said the Palestinians had recently demanded that militants not display weapons on the streets, and hoped ultimately to see no arms carried by anyone but Palestinian police.
