JERUSALEM
- US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice has turned up the pressure on Israel
to stop expanding West Bank settlements, cautioning in
her recent visit that Washington
wouldn’t accept new construction, Israeli officials said on Sunday.
The US Embassy and
Israeli Foreign Ministry refused to comment. But the scolding meshes with US
President George W. Bush’s criticism of settlement expansion after meeting with
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas
last month.
Israeli officials
present at a meeting where Rice leveled the criticism said she did not threaten
any particular penalty for settlement expansion. But they said she was
displeased by construction she saw when traveling from Jerusalem
to the West Bank town of Ramallah for meetings with
Palestinian leaders a week ago.
The officials
spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of their positions.
Friction between
the US and Israel
has surfaced over different readings of Bush’s April 2004 statement that a
peace settlement would have to take Israel’s
main settlement blocs into account.
Israel
continues to build in its largest settlement, Maaleh Adumim, and other established West Bank
communities, and to expropriate Palestinian land in annexed east Jerusalem,
which the Palestinians claim as capital of a future state.
The US
maintains that new construction on land the Palestinians claim for a future
state violates the terms of the US-backed “road map” peace plan, which Washington
hopes to revive after Israel
pulls out of the Gaza Strip and four northern West Bank
settlements this summer. The long-stalled plan calls on Israel
to freeze all settlement activity, while requiring the Palestinians to
dismantle militant groups. Neither side has fulfilled its obligations.
Israeli officials
said Rice said the US
wouldn’t be coerced to accept new facts on the ground that Israel
is creating in its effort to influence a final peace deal. Israel
has to stop the settlement expansion before it becomes a problem, the officials
cited her as saying.
After meeting with
Abbas last month, Bush cautioned that “Israel
should not undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or
prejudice final status negotiations with regard to Gaza,
the West Bank and Jerusalem.”
Rice was in the
region to promote coordination between Israel
and the Palestinians on the pullout. All sides recognize that without
coordination, Palestinian militants are liable to attack withdrawing settlers
and the security forces evacuating them, to create the impression that Israel
is being driven out.
Clashes between
the two sides have escalated in recent weeks. A second Israeli teenager wounded
last week by Palestinian gunmen near the West Bank city
of Hebron died Sunday, hospital
officials said.
Later in the day,
an abandoned Palestinian store in Hebron
was set ablaze, and a Palestinian man said he was beaten by Jewish settlers
near a Jewish shrine in the city, West bank police spokesman Shlomi Sagi said. The man was
taken to a hospital with light-to-moderate head injuries, Sagi
said.
The Israeli Cabinet, meanwhile, continued
sweetening the pot in an effort to defuse widespread settler resistance to the
evacuation. On Sunday, it approved new concessions to settlers who are to be
uprooted, including deeply discounted land in a prime coastal area not far from
Gaza.
Israeli security
forces are afraid rogue settlers or their supporters
will open fire on evacuating troops. On Sunday, lawmaker Zvi
Hendel, a settler leader, said settlers wouldn’t
resort to gunfire during the evacuation. “There will be no civil war in Gush Katif,” he said, referring to the largest settlement bloc
in Gaza.
6/26/05
Source: Khaleej Times
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