gelatik
15.05.02, 23:55
Erakat: Sharon Destroying Peace Process Revival Efforts
GAZA CITY, May 15 - Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat accused, Tuesday,
May 14, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of "tearing apart" efforts to
revive the peace process by vowing not to negotiate with the "corrupt"
Palestinian Authority unless it carries out sweeping reforms.
"With this speech Sharon is tearing apart all the efforts aimed at reviving the
peace process and sabotaging all the agreements that have been signed", Erakat
told AFP by telephone, referring to an address to parliament Tuesday.
"The irresponsible policy of this [Israeli] government is leading the region
and its people to a cycle of violence, chaos, instability and bloodshed", he
added.
Sharon told the Israeli parliament on Tuesday there will be no peace talks
until the "corrupt and dictatorial" Palestinian Authority carries out sweeping
internal reforms. "The Palestinian Authority must undergo basic structural
reforms in all areas, security, economic, legal, and social; the complete
transparency and organizational responsibility."
"Only then will we be able to sign a permanent peace agreement that we all hope
for so much," Sharon told the Israeli Knesset.
According to Erakat, Sharon's speech "reflects in the clearest way the policy
of the Israeli government based on state terrorism, pursuing occupation and
intensifying settlement activities".
He urged the United States, Europe and the Arab countries "to realize that this
government does not want to hear any talk about peace.
"Sharon proves to President [George W.] Bush that he is not a man of peace as
the latter called him, and that the aggression and the occupation will
continue", Erakat added.
Sharon, speaking to parliament, made no mention of a future Palestinian state,
two days after his own Likud party tried to box him into a corner by adopting a
resolution banning Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza.
He said he had told the U.S. Administration he would only enter peace talks if
the reforms were carried out and if there is a "complete cessation of
terrorism, violence and incitement.
Late Tuesday, the Palestinian leadership announced Arafat had issued a law on
judicial independence. It said the law would be published in full and would
come into immediate effect.
The Palestinian leadership also issued a statement describing the vote by
Israel's Likud party ruling out the prospect of a Palestinian state as
representing "a refusal by Likud and the Israeli government of a just peace."
In a poll released by Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharanot there was evident
strong support for Sharon, as well as for a Palestinian state as part of an
overall peace deal.
The poll showed that 63 percent of those surveyed favor accepting a Palestinian
state in a final Middle East peace deal and 34 percent object.
It showed that 68 percent of respondents, and 64 percent of Likud supporters,
considered that Sunday's vote should have been postponed as Sharon wished.
Those supporting Netanyahu among the overall population and among Likud members
stood at 26 percent and 35 percent, respectively.
Asked whom they would like to see as Likud's candidate for prime minister in
the next elections, due in 18 months, 55 percent of general respondents opted
for Sharon and 23 percent for Netanyahu. That proportion was reflected almost
exactly by Likud members.
Netanyahu was prime minister for three years until 1999, when his defeat by
Labor’s Ehud Barak forced him into temporary retirement from politics. He
admitted Tuesday that most Israelis did not share his opinion.
In another development, Israeli occupation troops backed by four tanks and an
armored bulldozer pushed 200 meters into a Palestinian controlled sector of the
southern Gaza Strip early Wednesday and began searching homes, Palestinian
security sources said.
The raid into Rafah came the morning after two Palestinians were slightly
wounded by Israeli gunfire in the same area, near the border with Egypt.
An army spokesman for his part reported Palestinian gunfire against the Jewish
settlement of Neve Dekalim near Rafah. No one was wounded, he said.
An Israeli military source also said that two mortar shells were fired late
Tuesday against a group of Jewish settlements in the southern Gaza Strip known
as Gush Katif, where a house was damaged.
