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Palestinians Say Sharon Could Lead Middle East To Bloody Conflict
WASHINGTON & GAZA CITY, Feb 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinian leaders said Wednesday that Israeli right-wing Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon could bulldoze years of negotiations and lead the Middle East into a gory conflict.
"If Sharon unilaterally denounces the Israeli-Palestinian accords, he will lead the region towards a bloody confrontation," Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said the day after Sharon's landslide election victory over incumbent Ehud Barak.
Likud leader Sharon has said several times that he considers as "dead" the Oslo peace accords signed by Israel and the Palestinians in 1993.
Saeb Erakat, a senior participant in talks with Barak for nearly two years, said the Palestinians would not undo any of the progress painstakingly attained so far.
"We cannot start from ground zero, and we must resume where we left off," Erakat said, adding that "a long way" had been traversed with Barak.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said he hoped the peace process would continue under Sharon, a 72-year-old former general vilified by Arabs and known as "the Bulldozer" for his aggressive style and corpulent stature.
Fatah called on Arabs to isolate Sharon and not negotiate with him and his "fascist" allies.
"The Fatah High Council in the West Bank calls for an escalation of the Intifada [uprising] and resistance to confront the indiscriminate butcher Sharon," said a Fatah statement.
"We call on the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization not to hold any contacts or negotiations with Sharon," it said.
Erakat said negotiations could resume, but not "at any price."
The Palestinian cabinet, which normally convenes on Fridays, moved forward it's meeting to Wednesday evening to discuss the ramifications of Sharon's victory.
Among other provocations, Palestinians blame Sharon for triggering the Intifada with a controversial September visit to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims.
Leaders of the Intifada, which has left some 400 people dead, most of them Palestinians, have called for a "day of rage" on Friday following similar action on election day.
The Islamic resistance group Hamas, behind numerous anti-Israeli attacks, said Sharon's election would give motivation to its fighters.
Sharon vowed during his campaign not to meet key Palestinian demands on Jerusalem, land, and the right of Palestinians refugees to return to Israel.
In a speech after he pummeled Barak in Tuesday's election, Sharon reiterated a promise not to relinquish control over east Jerusalem, which the Jewish state captured along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip and other territories in the 1967 Middle East war.
"If Sharon sticks to his announced program of Judaizing and annexing Jerusalem, the negotiations will be deadlocked and there will be no peace," said Erakat.
An editorial in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds said: "We consider the victory of Sharon as head of the Israeli government to have a gloomy significance for finding peace in the region and, in particular, for Israeli-Palestinian relations.
"There is also a danger for renewed conflict with Arab countries," added the newspaper, considered close to Arafat's self-rule Palestinian Authority.
A cartoon in the same newspaper depicted Sharon using a paintbrush to cover a canvas labeled "portrait of peace" with a coat of blood-red pigment.
Nabil Amr, minister of parliamentary affairs, said the Palestinians were prepared for an uphill struggle.
"Of course, the crises with Sharon are inevitable. Barak failed to cut a deal with us over any issue," he told Voice of Palestine radio.
"It is preferred to wait to see from which point Sharon wants to start the peace process. Also, we wait to see how the U.S. administration will intervene in regards to the peace process," he added.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is due to travel to the Middle East at the end of the month and is to meet with the Palestinians, Shaath said Wednesday, adding that specific plans had not yet been fixed.
The daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, also close to Arafat's authority, said in an editorial entitled "Another General" that it hoped Sharon would be better than past Likud prime ministers.
"We are ready for battle with those who want to do evil and we are ready for negotiations based on balance, if he is serious to negotiate a just and lasting peace based on international laws and complete past agreements."
Other Palestinian groups have voiced their opinions as well.
Three Damascus-based Palestinian groups on Wednesday denounced Sharon's election win, and called for the Palestinian uprising to continue.
"Zionist Israeli society has gone mad", the Damascus-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) said in a statement reacting to Sharon's runaway victory Tuesday.
The DFLP, headed by Nayef Hawatmeh, called on the Palestinians to continue their revolt against Israeli occupation and on the Israeli Labor party of Barak to refuse to join a coalition government led by Sharon.
"The Intifada and the resistance to Israel must be strengthened," the statement said, adding that the Palestinian Authority and "national forces" must review the policy of negotiating with Israel according to the 1993 Oslo agreement.
An official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) of Abu Ali Mustapha said Sharon's election was "a negative sign that threatens danger for the region."
Press spokesman Jawad Akl said that, "the Israeli right wing will escalate tension and extinguish the peace process."
"The Palestinian people are determined to continue the Intifada until their aims are achieved, namely freedom, independence and the return of refugees", he said.
For its part, Ahmad Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) said Sharon's accession to Israel's top spot was a "threat" to Arab countries.
"Ariel Sharon's ideas in favor of [Zionist] settlements and of the displacement of Palestinians [to Arab countries] are a direct threat to Palestinians, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt", the organization said in a statement.
"Sharon's crushing election victory proves the Zionist entity's determination to commit more massacres and impose its hegemony on the region," the PFLP-GC added.
"Therefore we call for the Intifada to continue and to reconsider the approach to a settlement with an enemy who only knows the language of murder," the statement said.
The DFLP split from the PFLP, who itself had split from the Palestine Liberation Organization. Neither organization has any affiliation with the PLO.
The PFLP-GC split from the PFLP in 1968, and is violently opposed to the peace process and the Palestinian Authority.
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