Sharon's four-stage plan

2004-05-27 14:58

Tel Aviv, Israel - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's revised "unilateral disengagement" plan, to be presented to Cabinet ministers on Thursday, has four stages instead of a one-step pullout from the Gaza Strip, an Israeli official said.

Media reports about the revised "unilateral disengagement" plan indicate that the process would start with evacuating three or four isolated settlements in the Gaza Strip. That would be followed by removal of the other Gaza settlements, a military redeployment in Gaza and evacuation of four small settlements in the northern part of the West Bank.

Not quick

The order and exact content of the steps is not known, nor is the timetable for implementing them, though it is not expected to be quick. Sharon has pledged to complete construction of a separation barrier along and in the West Bank before making any moves there, and completion of the barrier - denounced by Palestinians as a land grab - is about a year away.

Sharon's Likud Party turned down his original plan in a referendum on May 2, though the plan had US backing. After the party veto, the "quartet" of Mideast mediators - the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations - also endorsed the pullout plan.

Palestinians have been ambivalent about the proposal, demanding co-ordination with the Israelis over a withdrawal but welcoming, in principle, any Israeli evacuation of the Palestinian areas.

Sharon has said he would co-ordinate the pullout with the United States and Egypt but has no intention of discussing it with the Palestinians.

Trouble

Analysts say the revised plan will cause Sharon even more trouble than his original one, because opponents object in principle to evacuating settlements. They would just as vigorously oppose a blueprint for removing a few at a time as they would a one-step programme.

The concept of Sharon and the Likud leading a drive to evacuate Jewish settlements in the Palestinian areas was jarring to many and unbelievable to others.

In a series of Cabinet posts over more than two decades, Sharon has been the primary mover in building and expansion of settlements, to the delight of his party, which holds to an ideology claiming all of the areas now under Israeli control as their own and rejecting creation of a Palestinian state.

Agreeing to put a settlement removal plan to a vote before his party is considered one of Sharon's biggest political blunders. Though the Likud voted against it, public opinion polls show that up to two-thirds of the electorate as a whole support the proposal.

Promoting his failed original plan, Sharon said that there is no future for 7 500 Jewish settlers among 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and the 21 settlements there must be sacrificed in order to assure the existence of settlements in the West Bank, where more than 200 000 Jews live in about 150 settlements.

- AP