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TEL AVIV, Nov 13: Israel said on Tuesday its forces would remain in two Palestinian-ruled West Bank areas despite a demand by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council for a pullout.
Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said troops would not leave West Bank areas around Jenin and Tulkarm until Palestinian security forces agreed to restrain guerillas and prevent violence.
“There is a plan to withdraw. It has been postponed and delayed because of the current security situation,” Gissin told Reuters. “People get killed, that’s why we’re there... Under these conditions we can’t withdraw.”
Israel reoccupied areas in and around six Palestinian-ruled cities in the West Bank after Palestinian radicals assassinated a far-right minister on Oct 17. It has withdrawn from four of the areas.
Palestinian minister Hassan Asfour condemned an appeal by the UN Security Council’s five major powers for an end to the revolt against Israeli occupation, saying it justified “Israel’s terrorist acts against the Palestinian people”.
The foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, in addition to their call on Monday for an Israeli pullout from Palestinian areas, also called on Palestinians to end the uprising.
Asfour said the five Security Council members had missed a chance to restart long-stalled Middle East peace talks.
“I was hoping that the foreign ministers would...attempt to put an end to the conflict, reiterating the need to end Israel’s occupation,” he said.
DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS CONTINUE: The United States has been trying to calm the violence to cement Arab and Islamic support for its war in Afghanistan.
A delegation of European Union leaders was to leave for the Middle East on Friday to try to coax Israel and the Palestinians back to peace talks and bolster relations with Arab states concerned about Afghanistan, officials in Brussels said.
Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu al-Ragheb said Arab states and the European Union were actively seeking a Middle East peace plan.
“Huge Arab and European efforts are under way on the basis of (establishing) a Palestinian state on the horizon and at the same time declaring an initiative for peace negotiations,” he was quoted as saying in the Jordan Times.
Abu Ragheb also said US Secretary of State Colin Powell was due in the region “within the next two weeks” to jump start peacemaking.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters that US President George W. Bush had to make good his vision of Israeli and Palestinian states living peacefully side-by-side, which he presented to the UN General Assembly on Saturday.
“It’s very important for this to be transferred from a vision to a political track,” Erekat said in an interview.
MILITARY ACTION CONTINUES: Despite the UN call for an end to violence, Israeli soldiers briefly entered a Palestinian-ruled area of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after troops discovered a bomb, the army said.
A Palestinian security spokesman said the army flattened Palestinian land in the area and then withdrew.
Palestinian witnesses also said the Israeli army had moved deeper into Tulkarm and Jenin.
The army said security forces had also arrested members of a Palestinian militant squad linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction.
It said the group planned attacks on Jewish settlers and Israelis in and around Hebron in the West Bank as well as in Jerusalem.
The group acted under direct orders of Marwan Zalloom, a senior Fatah official in Hebron who has not been arrested by the Palestinian Authority despite demands by Israel, the army said.
At least 703 Palestinians and 188 Israelis have been killed in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that erupted in September 2000 after peace talks deadlocked.
In a report documenting the first year of the uprising, Amnesty International called for international observers to be dispatched immediately to calm the violence and accused both sides of human rights violations.
“An international observing presence can greatly assist by defusing situations and give both Palestinians and Israelis greater protection,” Amnesty said in a statement highlighting the contents of its 98-page report.
Israel has repeatedly rejected calls for international monitors in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.—Reuters
