Sharon says not all West Bank settlements to stay

Ariel Sharon

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has acknowledged that "not all" Jewish settlement in the West Bank would remain in any final peace deal with the Palestinians.

But Sharon, speaking a week after completing a removal of settlers from Gaza and part of the West Bank, repeated that Israel would keep larger West Bank settlements for good, a step Palestinians fear would prevent them creating a viable state.

"Not all the settlements in Judea and Samaria today will remain," Sharon said, using biblical names for the West Bank.

He has continued to declare that any further settlement withdrawals would only follow a return to the internationally agreed "road map" to peace, which he insists will only happen when the Palestinian leadership disarms and disables Hamas. Talks are unlikely to start at least until after general elections in Israel and the Palestinian territories due next year.

Sharon, in an Israeli television interview, repeated that Israel would retain control over sprawling West Bank Jewish enclaves where the vast majority of more than 240,000 settlers live among 2.4 million Palestinians.

"These settlements will remain in our hands and will be linked territorially to Israel. These blocs have first rate strategic importance for Israel," he said. "They will remain in our hands and there is no doubt about this matter."

Sharon did not name the settlements he would keep, but these are likely to include the large Ariel enclave near the West Bank city of Nablus, Maale Adumim outside Jerusalem and the Gush Etzion bloc south of Bethlehem.

Israel removed 8500 settlers from all 21 enclaves in Gaza, a tiny coastal strip, and a few hundred from four enclaves in the northern West Bank this month under Sharon's unilateral plan to "disengage" from conflict with Palestinians.

He said that Israel would not withdraw unilaterally from further territory and that any further land handed over would be as part of a final peace deal.

"I don't see any additional disengagements. The disengagement was a one-time step and I don't see another one," Sharon said on Channel 10 television.

"The next step is to move to the road map. There are no more stages of disengagement. When it comes to what settlements Israel will be asked to remove, this will be at the last stage of the road map ... the last stage of negotiations," he said.

"This subject can come up only in the last stage because anything determined today will be used as a starting point for negotiations," Sharon added.

The World Court has ruled Israel's settlements in Gaza and the West Bank as illegal. Israel disputes this. Palestinians welcomed "disengagement" but want Israel to also cede all of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem for a capital.

Meanwhile Sharon has accused Benjamin Netanyahu, his main rival to lead the dominant Likud party, of being a "stressed" person "who panics and loses his senses".

Mr Sharon fired the first shots in what promises to be a bitterly fought contest by declaring last night that the man who served as his finance minister until three weeks ago "was not fit to lead a government".

He said Mr Netanyahu - who was Prime Minister from 1996 to 1999 - had "run away from his responsibilities" by resigning in protest over the Gaza disengagement less than a week before he was due to present his budget, after having voted for the withdrawal.

The latest polls show that Mr Netanyahu, who is going all-out to secure the hard-right vote in the party, is the front-runner among registered party members, but he trails Mr Sharon in popularity among the electorate at large.

As Israel Radio reported that Mr Netanyahu was likely to announce his candidacy today, Mr Sharon said in an interview on Israel's Channel 10: "Benjamin Netanyahu is a stressful and stressed person, who panics and loses his senses - and a person like this cannot lead a state."

He added that Mr Netanyahu was "not fit to lead a government --certainly not a government like Israel's. Here one needs emotional calm."

The crisis posed for Mr Sharon by Mr Netanyahu's candidacy has prompted some aides to start discussing the possibility that he might form a new party of the "centre" with significant elements of Labour, now in his coalition government .

But the relative ferocity of his remarks last night strongly suggest that the Prime Minister has by no means abandoned hopes of defeating Mr Netanyahu in Likud leadership primaries, not least by emphasising the former's lack of broad electoral appeal compared to his own.

- THE INDEPENDENT and REUTERS