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Palestinian militant from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a terrorist group linked to the Fatah movement, stands next to burning tires as militants blocked the traffic to protest against the lack of jobs in the central Gaza Strip Thursday. (AP)
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Ehud Olmert addresses supporters after his party's victory, Wednesday. (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners March 30, 2006 |
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Fresh off its election victory, the Kadima Party is already hard at work devising a plan to pull 70,000 of 250,000 Jewish settlers out of Judea and Samaria.
But in the absence of negotiations with a Hamas-run Palestinian government, no one should expect a new country called "Palestine" any time soon.
Israel's plan, senior officials say, includes holding onto large swaths of territory in Judea and Samaria housing tens of thousands of settlers, maintaining a military presence in most of the area and keeping the holy city of Jerusalem for itself.
In his victory speech Tuesday night, Kadima leader and acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he preferred negotiations over unilateral action, but he would not wait indefinitely for a viable Palestinian peace partner. Israel's final borders, he said, will be set by 2010 with or without a peace deal.
Kadima officials told The Associated Press they will give Hamas a period of time - perhaps a year - to decide whether to renounce violent struggle and enter negotiations before Israel starts withdrawing on its own. During that time, Israel will be in close contact with settlers in Judea and Samaria to find them alternative housing, said Otniel Schneller, a Kadima legislator who has spent the past few weeks formulating Olmert's pullout plan.
Palestinians fear Israel's unilateral imposition of borders will destroy any hope of establishing a viable, contiguous state, mostly because of Israeli plans to maintain and expand large Judean and Samarian settlement blocs. Israel says it has no obligation to coordinate its plans with a Hamas government dedicated to its destruction.
A new Hamas Cabinet was sworn in Wednesday by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, two months after the militant group swept parliamentary elections.
Schneller said Israel wants a future Palestinian state to have "territorial continuity."
In drawing its borders, whether through unilateral withdrawals or negotiations, Israel will make sure the Palestinians will get contiguous territory so they will be able to establish a viable state, he said. In the absence of a peace deal, the army will remain in evacuated, he said.
But in the next breath, Schneller added: "We want to preserve as many settlements and as many residents as possible because just because we give up on land doesn't mean we believe it isn't rightfully ours."
Olmert billed the election as a referendum on his proposed pullback. The results, though falling far short of an overwhelming mandate, confirmed that most Israelis now favor withdrawal - aware that holding on to all Arab land captured in the 1967 Mideast war threatens Israel's Jewish character.
But the extent of the pullout will be very different from last summer's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip because of the proximity of the territory to major Israeli population centers and the possibility that West Bank terrorists will start firing rockets at Israel.
Hamas, despite honoring a year-old cease-fire, has been working to develop rocket technology in Judea and Samaria while smuggling in light weapons and explosives, in addition to improving communications and training, said an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Terrorists in the Gaza Strip fired a Russian-made Katyusha rocket into Israel for the first time Tuesday, the army said, heightening Israeli fears about increasingly sophisticated weaponry that could also be used in Judea and Samaria.
Moshe Eliasian, an Israeli resident of the Mitzpeh Dani settlement near the Samarian city of Ramallah, is among the thousands of settlers slated for evacuation. He predicted Olmert's plan would bring more bloodshed.
"None of us are going to be safe, not in Judea and Samaria and not in the rest of Israel," he said.
Israeli officials said the proposed withdrawal, at least initially, would entail the removal of settlers only, with the army maintaining a strong presence to prevent terrorist attacks.
"The first stage will not include a disengagement of the military forces from the West Bank [Judea and Samaria]," said Lior Horev, a strategic adviser to Olmert and Kadima.
Olmert has said Israel's final border will follow the security barrier Israel is building in Judea and Samaria to separate itself from the Palestinians, though the path of the barrier could be adjusted. It will incorporate the three major Judean and Samarian settlement blocs - Maaleh Adumim and Gush Etzion outside Jerusalem, and Ariel.
Olmert says Israel will also maintain the Jordan River Valley as a security border. And Israel has already begun building a controversial West Bank project between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim, the biggest settlement, despite strong Palestinian and U.S. objections.
On one recent afternoon, bulldozers cleared land for a planned police station in the area, known as E1. In the distance, more land was being cleared at the eastern tip of Maaleh Adumim. Nearby, workers put the finishing touches on freshly built apartment buildings.
"They want to separate the south of the West Bank from the north and also the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank and to separate Jerusalem from the other cities of the West Bank. So where is the good news for us?" asked Ghazi Hamad, the editor of a weekly Hamas newspaper in Gaza.
The proposed withdrawal, said Israeli analyst Yossi Klein Halevi, "is about uprooting isolated settlements that can't be defended. It's not about creating an ideal Palestinian state.
"That happens in negotiations, not in unilateralism," said Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center think tank in Jerusalem.
AP contributed to this report.
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