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Middle East
ISRAEL ACKNOWLEDGES ROADMAP NOT LINKED TO PA
2004-01-08
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has pledged to the United States that he will help establish an interim Palestinian state in 2004 regardless of whether the Palestinian Authority ends the more than three-year-old war with the Jewish state and eliminates insurgency groups.
But does an interim Paleostinian state have to include the Paleostinian Authority?
Israeli officials said Sharon relayed such a commitment to President George Bush in late 2003. Sharon, the officials said, agreed to a U.S. demand that the so-called roadkill roadmap for a Palestinian state be implemented over the next year without the fulfillment of a Palestinian commitment to destroy the infrastructure of such insurgency groups as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Fatah-sponsored Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Under the Sharon commitment, officials said, Israel would dismantle outposts established by Jewish settlers in the West Bank over nearly the last three years. This would be followed by an Israeli military withdrawal from much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip during 2004 to facilitate the establishment of a Palestinian state with interim borders. "The Americans said clearly that within the first phase of the roadmap, the sides were to fulfill their commitments in parallel, with our obligations not dependent on whether the PA fulfilled its obligations," Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim said. "So we have to do this in order to fulfill our commitment to the Americans."
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#7  Isn't there some common-law/wink&nod thing we can work out with the Families? Give the families the West Bank as a free vice, no shooting zone... no hassles. It would solve all manner of problems.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-1-8 5:06:59 PM  

#6  The Paleostinians will have a clearly defined border and will be separated from Israel by a fence. Contacts between Israel and Paleostine are too expensive in terms of the human cost to the Israelis, so Paleostine will be just a big ghetto. If the Saudis and the EU want to throw money down a rathole, then that's their perogative. Israel and the world will move on and eventually prosper as the ME reforms. Maybe the Paleos will some day get a clue and realize that they are just being used as pawns in the Hate-Israel-game. Don't hold your breath. The smart ones left already.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2004-1-8 4:21:11 PM  

#5  Exactly. The fence will be up by then. Bye ! Good luck over there !
Posted by: Anonymous   2004-1-8 12:06:02 PM  

#4  Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has pledged to the United States that he will help establish an interim Palestinian state in 2004

"See, here's your nice new border fence..."
Posted by: snellenr   2004-1-8 11:28:31 AM  

#3  "The Americans said clearly that within the first phase of the roadmap, the sides were to fulfill their commitments in parallel, with our obligations not dependent on whether the PA fulfilled its obligations," Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim said. "So we have to do this in order to fulfill our commitment to the Americans."

And in the meantime, it's business as usual for the Palestinians, who haven't done diddly squat.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2004-1-8 10:08:28 AM  

#2  such insurgency groups as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Fatah-sponsored Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

With any luck at all, the IDF will kill/cashier the heads of all these groups in the coming months, so they will not be a factor no matter how this plan turns out, as it should have been from the beginning.

God Bless General Sharon. This man leaned in the strike zone and took one for the team over the Sabra-Shatilla incident in 1982, and yet may well wind up being the guy who brings real peace to the fertile crescent once and for all.
Posted by: badanov   2004-1-8 8:20:46 AM  

#1  This seems so wrong on the surface. But I'm beginning to suspect a back-room deal in which Israel does all it can to not give the Arab states cause for greivance in exchange for continued US action to make (keep?) the mid-east free of Islamic nukes. Translation: Stay cool, and Syria is next. And if ya gotta bomb the Iranian reactor, Uncle Sam won't be too upset.
Posted by: Scooter McGruder   2004-1-8 1:01:14 AM  

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