TEL AVIV, Nov 28: Israel and the Palestinians were stepping up contacts on Friday after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon admitted some withdrawals from occupied land were inevitable but also warned of unilateral measures.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei’s bureau chief Hassan Abu Libdeh is due to meet Mr Sharon’s own top adviser Dov Weisglass next week, to pave the way for a first meeting between the two premiers.

The principle of that meeting appeared to have been secured two weeks ago, following the swearing in of Mr Qorei’s new cabinet, but Ariel Sharon’s tough line in a speech to the press on Thursday cast some doubt over the summit.

Yet the publicity surrounding an unofficial peace plan due to be signed in Geneva on Monday has forced Mr Sharon to show he is undertaking his own efforts for a resumption of talks.

His son Omri, an MP and influential behind-the-scenes negotiator, on Thursday met Palestinian security chief Jibril Rajoub in London.

Mr Rajoub is a close associate of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom Israel refuses to deal with and has kept under virtual house arrest in the West Bank town of Ramallah for the past two years.

Mr Rajoub said the Israeli government halt its construction of the separation barrier in the West Bank, but the prime minister vowed it would be accelerated.

Despite rare financial sanctions by Washington over the barrier and Israel’s settlement activity in the Palestinian territories, a defiant Sharon argued that the fence was vital to Israel’s security.

The Palestinians charge that Israel is using the barrier, which cuts deep into Palestinian territory, to seize the West Bank’s fertile areas and pre-empt the borders of a two-state solution.

“I believe that the Israeli prime minister is continuing his policy which aims to impose a reality on the ground through continuing settlements and the building of the wall,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.

However, Mr Sharon admitted that Israel could not maintain its presence everywhere in the occupied territories in the context of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

“It is clear that we will not always be in all the places that we are now. That is the real political horizon for them and for us to reach a stable peace agreement, which starts with a ceasefire,” the premier said in his speech.

But he refused to confirm reports that his government was planning to evacuate the Jewish hardliners’ settlement of Netzarim, which lies just a stone’s throw away from Gaza City.

The Maariv daily quoted political sources on Friday as saying Mr Sharon was planning to dismantle isolated Gaza settlements in exchange for the annexation of large Jewish blocs in the West Bank, should the internationally-backed roadmap remain stalled.

“Sharon is considering a unilateral measure of evacuating settlements from the Gaza Strip in conjunction with applying Israeli law to one or more settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), if negotiations with the Palestinians over the roadmap fail,” the newspaper said.

The paper, quoting political sources, said the premier could decide to annex the settlement blocs of Gush Etzion and Maale Adumim, in exchange for withdrawals from Gaza Strip communities, including Netzarim. —AFP