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Palestinian
Killed As Sharon's Buffer Zone Plane Receives Negative Feedback
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Palestinians
watch as Sharon announces his buffer-zone plan |
AL
KHALIL (HEBRON) Feb. 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian man
was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers near the West Bank town of Al Khalil
(Hebron) early Saturday, Palestinian security and hospital sources said, news
agencies reported.
Firas
al-Bau, 22, was killed after he and a friend approached an Israeli outpost and
called out "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), an Israeli army statement
said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. The Israeli soldiers, suspecting the
two of trying to carry out an attack, then opened fire.
"An
army troop in an outpost east of Halhool identified a suspicious figure running
towards the outpost screaming "Allah is great". When the suspect
reached the post's fence the force opened fire at the suspect, killing
him," an army statement said. The statement said Bau's friend escaped into
Palestinian-controlled territory.
His
death brought to 1,273 the number killed since the Palestinian uprising began in
September 2000, including 974 Palestinians and 276 Israelis.
In
the southern Gaza strip, a Palestinian boy was seriously wounded by Israeli
gunfire Saturday when troops moved toward a Palestinian refugee camp, medical
sources said.
The
11-year-old boy was hit in the back by a bullet fired by a machine gun mounted
on an Israeli tank moving toward a refugee camp in Rafah, in the southern Gaza
Strip near the border with Egypt.
Security
sources said one tank and a bulldozer moved 10 meters (yards) into Palestinian
self-rule areas of Rafah, firing heavy machine guns.
Meanwhile,
hardline Israeli Infrastructure Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Saturday he will
pull his party out of Israel's coalition government if a decision is taken to
lift the house arrest of Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, Israeli public
radio reported.
"If
the cabinet decides to allow Arafat to leave Ramallah I will call for a party
meeting, and the party will leave the government within a week," said
Lieberman.
Earlier,
public radio reported that the Israeli cabinet will meet Sunday to discuss
whether to end Arafat's house arrest.
Israel
has kept Arafat confined to his offices in the West Bank town of Ramallah since
early December. The radio said Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres support the move to end the house arrest, saying Arafat
had met Israel's conditions.
However,
Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz said on its website that Sharon rejected the bid
because Arafat had not met all of Israel's demands.
Arafat
has arrested the alleged assassins of tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi, killed in
October, and those behind an aborted attempt to smuggle arms into the
Palestinian territories aboard a ship.
The
arrest Thursday of the two gunmen who killed Zeevi, as well as the man who sent
them, met the main condition set by Israel to allow Arafat to leave Ramallah.
But
the hardline Sharon declined to tell reporters later whether Arafat would be
allowed his freedom of movement. Instead, he said Israel had "demanded the
arrests of more terrorists and of those implicated in the Iranian arms smuggling
affair".
Meanwhile,
the liberal leaders from 11 countries have jointly called on Sharon and Arafat
to end their conflict and resume peace talks, Swedish Prime Minister Goeran
Persson said.
In
a three-paragraph letter addressed to Sharon and Arafat and disclosed to
reporters by Persson on Friday, all 11 heads of state and government attending a
two-day "Stockholm Progressive Summit" said they "strongly urge
you to seize the opportunity to break the spiral of terror and violence.
"Re-establish
the security talks according to the Mitchell and Tenet agreements," the
letter implored. "Pave the way for negotiations between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority."
In
the letter, copies of which were distributed by Persson's aides, summit
participants including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French Prime
Minister Lionel Jospin told Sharon and Arafat: "You two are ultimately
responsible for solving the conflict."
Meanwhile,
the creation of buffer zones separating Israel from the occupied territories,
announced by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is a highly controversial
measure opposed by both left and right in Israel, reported AFP.
"The
buffer zones will lead to security separation and contribute to the security of
all Israeli citizens," Sharon said during a Thursday televised address
aimed at outlining a new approach amid growing concern in Israel that the
government had no clear plan to tackle the security crisis. Sharon gave no
further details on the proposed "buffer zones".
The
option of setting up a physical separation between Israel and the West Bank had
first been put forward following a deadly June 1 bombing outside a night club in
Tel Aviv. Sharon had endorsed the project begrudgingly, fearing that the
construction of defense systems along the demarcation line between Israel and
the West Bank would give a permanent nature to a border which he hopes to push
back in order to include most of the Jewish settlements.
The
Haaretz daily suggested that Sharon emphasized the term "security
separation" to stress the "buffer zones" project did not conceal
any political maneuver. "It's not about setting up a frontier. The zones
are to permit Tsahal (Israeli forces) to act in these regions," Israeli
Chief of Staff General Shaul Mofaz told Paris-based Radio Shalom Friday.
The
plan drawn up last summer is said to consist in establishing a three to
eight-kilometre (two to five-mile) wide security zone inside the West Bank,
running along the 1967 border from the bastion of Palestinian activity of Jenin
in the north to the flashpoint city of Hebron in the south.
The
head of Israel's domestic security service, Avi Dichter, together with several
army officers, had been pushing for a physical separation between Israel and the
Palestinians.
"In
such 'buffer zones' such as those which already exist in the Gaza Strip, traffic
is completely banned to Palestinians and shooting instructions are
different," the army commander of southern Israel, General Doron Almog,
told public radio.
According
to the local press, the project, the cost of which is estimated at 70 million
dollars, involves erecting several hundred kilometres of electric fences along
the "Green line". The system should also be beefed up in some areas
with trenches and mine fields.
The
vast majority of Jewish settlements will however remain outside the proposed
security zone, to their great displeasure. "If Sharon separates himself
from us, we will separate ourselves from him," the daily Maariv reported
settler representatives as saying Friday. Some 200,000 settlers live in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip.
Ahmed
Abel Rahman, the Palestinian Cabinet's secretary general said Friday, that
Palestinians will resist Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's efforts to build
a buffer zone because it amounts to shutting them up in a "big
prison".
Abdel
Rahman and other officials said the buffer zone will also fail to achieve the
security Israelis seek so badly.
"He's
(already) building the Berlin Wall in Jerusalem," Abdel Rahman said,
speaking of a proposal outlined last month to envelop Jerusalem with walls,
trenches, fences and guard towers.
"He
wants to have Bantustans like in South Africa," Abdel Rahman told AFP when
contacted in Ramallah at the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"He will make our cities and areas like a big prison. We will resist,"
the official said.
Abdel
Rahman and other Palestinians were also encouraged by faint signs of revival of
the Israeli peace movement and opposition to Sharon's hardline approach. In
recent weeks, left-wing Israelis have staged protests for peace and 200 army
reservists have refused to serve in the Palestinian territories.
"Sharon's
in a bigger crisis because of his policy," which amounts to embracing a
military over a political solution to the Palestinian problem, Abdel Rahman
said.
Israeli
newspaper Yediot Aharanot said Friday that 61 per cent of the Israelis polled a
day after sharon's speech said that Sharon was mishandling the Intifada.
Only
38 percent said they would give Sharon a good grade for his treatment of the
17-month-old Palestinian uprising.
Numbers
haven't changed dramatically from two weeks ago when 54 percent said they were
dissatisfied with the way Sharon handled security questions, compared with 37
percent who expressed their satisfaction in an Market Watch poll.
However,
faith in the Israeli Prime Minister sunk as only 54 percent rated Sharon as a
credible prime minister, while 40 percent expressed the opposite view and 6
percent did not respond.
This
result marked a 10-percent drop since a January poll, and is an all time low
since July when 77 percent of Israelis said the Sharon was credible.
Reacting
to Sharon's speech, Arafat's advisor Nabil Abu Rudeina warned that his proposal
for buffer zones was a "dangerous escalation" aimed at wrecking any
chances for peace with the Palestinians. "It will not help the peace
process. This means Sharon wants to destroy international efforts to protect the
peace process," he said. Abu Rudeina said it was "dangerous for Sharon
to choose the military solution as a strategic option."
The
United States on Friday gave a cold shoulder to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's plans to create buffer zones with the Palestinian territories,
remaining mute on the subject while eagerly seizing on a peace overture from
Saudi Arabia.
State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher repeatedly declined to comment on Sharon's
ideas saying they lacked specifics. But at the same time, he hinted that U.S.
officials were not particularly interested in getting details of the plan and
would instead prefer to focus on the larger issue of forging a ceasefire between
Israel and the Palestinians.
"If
there are any more details to be provided, they should be provided by the
Israeli government," Boucher said when asked for the US view of Sharon's
address.
Pressed
for a reaction to Sharon's remarks, Boucher finally replied: "I don't have
any particular comment on the speech."
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