TEL AVIV, April 12: Israel will present 15 reservations to the United States next week over a US-backed peace “road map” that calls for a Palestinian state by 2005, senior Israeli government sources said on Saturday.
Without spelling out the wording of the Israeli paper, the sources said it envisioned the Palestinians giving up the right of refugee return to what is now the Jewish state, in exchange for Israeli acceptance of the plan.
Palestinian officials said such a demand was a non-starter.
“I believe that this is a flagrant attempt to sabotage and undermine the road map,” Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told Reuters. “This is another way of saying the Israeli government is rejecting the road map.”
Some 3.9 million Palestinian refugees are registered with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Most live in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Israeli leaders have said their return to their former homes would be demographic suicide for the Jewish state which has a population of 5.8 million.
Dov Weisglass, chief of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s bureau, planned to meet US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in Washington on Monday to convey the 15 reservations drafted by government advisers, the sources said.
The road map calls for a series of reciprocal measures, including a halt to Palestinian violence in a 30-month-old uprising and an end to Jewish settlement activity, to pave the way for statehood two years from now.
In bloodshed in the West Bank, a Palestinian trying to circumvent an Israeli military roadblock near the city of Nablus was killed when he hit his head falling into a ditch while taking cover from army gunfire, witnesses said.—Reuters
