Meir Shitreet says Israel will have to leave most of its Biblical heartland
By Israel Insider staff and partners December 2, 2005
Israel will have to pull out of most of the West Bank and allow the Palestinians to establish a state, a Cabinet minister close to Ariel Sharon said in an interview published Friday.
In the meantime, "not a single additional house" should be built in the communities of Judea and Samaria ("the West Bank"), Cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit, who recently joined Sharon's new centrist Kadima party, told The Jerusalem Post. Israelis should instead settle in the outlying Negev Desert and Galilee regions, he added.
Sharon has not spelled out a detailed peacemaking plan, except to say Israel will hold on to large Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank in any peace deal and will not carry out additional West Bank troop pullbacks.
It was not clear whether Sheetrit was giving clues to what Sharon might do if elected to a third term in March, or whether he was expressing his personal views.
Earlier this week, another Sharon ally, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, said Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank could help determine where a future border would run -- strongly suggestion that Israel would eventually withdraw from most of Judea and Samaria.
If the barrier becomes the border, Israel would be annexing about 8 percent of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the sector the Palestinians seek as a future capital.
Sheetrit and Livni are among 13 members of the Likud Party who defected to Kadima.
In his interview, Sheetrit said that if Israel wants to remain a democracy with a Jewish majority, it will eventually "have no choice but to leave most of the territories and let the Palestinians establish a state next to us."
Sheetrit insisted, as has Sharon on several occasions, that Israel will not carry out any more unilateral withdrawals, like the one this summer from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.
"We won't act unilaterally. The partnership is achieved through negotiations. The world won't sit idly by. The Americans are involved. The Europeans," Sheetrit said.
"A unilateral pullback is not a solution. It's running away. We cannot withdraw unilaterally. We cannot withdraw without a peace treaty, and we won't withdraw without a peace treaty," he added.
But if the Palestinians don't dismantle and disarm militant groups, Israel will not move ahead with peace negotiations, instead pushing forward with construction of the separation barrier, which effectively halts suicide bombings, Sheetrit said.
The barrier dips deep into the West Bank in some places to encircle Jewish settlements, infuriating the Palestinians who want the land for a future state.
Earlier this week, Livni told a conference that "one does not have to be a genius to see that the fence will have implications for the future border."
Mahmoud Abbas has so far been a disappointment, Sheetrit said, but expressed hope that after a Palestinian parliamentary election in January, the Palestinian leader will take steps to rein in the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups.
"If they don't tackle terror we won't pull back," Sheetrit said. "He (Abbas) can gather the necessary courage, impose law and order, use his security forces the way he should, and eliminate terror. If he does that, he'll have a state very quickly."
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