Israeli rightists rally against Sharon plan ( 2004-01-12 08:39) (Agencies)
Tens of thousands of Israeli right-wingers rallied
Sunday against a plan from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, their champion
for decades, that could spell the end for some Jewish settlements.
It was the biggest show of force by the pro-settler movement since Sharon
said late last year that Israel would act alone to separate from the
Palestinians if peace efforts fail under a plan that would also mean uprooting
some settlements.
Israeli pro-settler supporters demonstrate
in Tel Aviv's Yitzhak Rabin Square January 11, 2004. Tens of
thousands of people protested against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan
that would mean moving some Jewish settlers from the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, witnesses said. [Reuters]
The
presence of at least two members of Sharon's cabinet in a crowd estimated by
police sources at 80,000 underscored internal divisions over Sharon's vow, which
has also drawn Palestinian ire and concern from Israel's U.S. ally.
They rallied under a banner that read "Israel Does Not Want to Fold."
But an unfazed Sharon, a 75-year-old former army general, said in Jerusalem:
"Things are decided not by demonstrators but by the government, my government."
He reiterated that Israel was committed to a U.S.-backed peace "road map,"
but if that failed it would take unilateral steps "under which we would have to
relocate some Jewish communities and redeploy our armed forces."
MOOD OF BETRAYAL
A mood of betrayal hung heavily over the rally in Tel Aviv's Yitzhak
Rabin Square, named after the left-wing prime minister shot dead there in
1995 by a Jewish extremist opposed to his interim peace deals with the
Palestinians.
"Sharon is making sounds of weakness," Housing Minister Effi Eitam of the
National Religious Party said to cheers.
Fellow cabinet member Uzi Landau, a stalwart of the ruling Likud party,
suggested that Palestinians rather than settlers should be moved. "If Jewish
communities can be relocated, Arab communities can also be relocated," he said.
The road map has been thrown into doubt by violence and the failure of either
side to take promised steps for peace.
Sharon is threatening a selective pullback along the line of a barrier going
up in the West Bank, but looping around the biggest settlement blocs.
Palestinians fear the barrier would splinter the state they seek and called
Sunday for international help to stop it.
"I am trying to attract attention to what they are trying to do through this
wall," Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie said Sunday in Qalqilya, one of
the West Bank cities penned in by the barrier. "They are drawing a picture of an
imposed solution on the ground."
Palestinians have said they might scrap independence plans and demand a
"bi-national" single state -- grouping Israel with the West Bank and Gaza Strip
-- where Arabs could be in the majority within a few years.
In the West Bank Sunday, a Palestinian suicide bomber died alone when he
apparently set off his explosives prematurely near a settlement. Israeli troops
shot dead a Palestinian during clashes with stone-throwers.
