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Sharon asks parliament to endorse new
coalition Bush ties Palestinian state to Iraq Jordan Times - TEL AVIV (Agencies) — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked parliament on Thursday to approve a new rightist cabinet likely to harden Israel's line on Middle East peace after his rival Benjamin Netanyahu accepted a post he had earlier spurned. Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush said his planned war in Iraq could end the 29-month conflict with the Palestinians. Faced with the task of tackling the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation which has cost close to 3,000 lives, as Washington ups pressure on the Palestinians, Sharon was due in Egypt next week for his first meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak since becoming premier. Overcoming the final sticking point to forming the government, Netanyahu agreed to Sharon's offer to become finance minister, reversing a decision to reject the job as a demotion from his previous post as foreign minister. Outgoing finance minister Silvan Shalom, a Sharon ally, was named on Wednesday to take over the foreign ministry in what was seen as a bid to sideline Netanyahu, the hawkish former premier and Sharon's main rival for leadership of their Likud Party. The formation of Sharon's new cabinet following his triumph in the Jan. 28 election came against a backdrop of stepped-up Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people as the region thawed out from a rare snowstorm that had kept violence in check for two days. The hawkish complexion of the government, including fierce opponents of Palestinian statehood and staunch supporters of Jewish settlements, could add to obstacles facing international mediators seeking to end two and-a-half years of violence. In presenting his coalition for parliamentary approval, Sharon repeated his position that the Palestinians must stop “incitement and terror” and implement deep democratic reforms before any political negotiations can resume. He also said Palestinians must drop their long-standing demand for the “right of return” to parts of Israel from which they were displaced during the 1948 Middle East war — a major stumbling block in past peace negotiations. “The people of Israel seek peace and I am convinced that for real peace there is a willingness for painful concessions,” Sharon told parliament during a stormy session. His speech was interrupted repeatedly by loud heckling from ultra-Orthodox politicians, whose parties — Israel's traditional kingmakers — have been frozen out of government for the first time since the Jewish state was created in 1948. Despite that, parliamentary approval was largely a formality since Sharon now controls 68 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. After the vote of confidence, new ministers were to be sworn in. No `roadmap' mention Sharon made no mention of a US-backed “roadmap” to Palestinian statehood by 2005. Bush said on Wednesday he remained committed to the “peace” outline though Sharon has called for numerous revisions. “It is a government that will serve settlement activities and undermine the roadmap plan,” Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat told Reuters. Sharon has stated his support for an eventual Palestinian state — albeit a truncated, demilitarised version that falls far short of Palestinian aspirations. He said any negotiations on the matter, which he acknowledged was a source of deep divisions within his coalition, would require special cabinet approval. US pressure was heralded again Wednesday when Bush claimed that toppling President Saddam Hussein would speed the creation of a Palestinian state and spread democracy in the Arab world, an argument the US used in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. “A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform this vital region by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions,” Bush said in a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank. The US leader drew his closest linkage yet between his accelerating campaign to wage war against Iraq and topple its leader, and languishing US efforts at breaking the deadly cycle of violence that has bloodied Israel and the Palestinians living under Israeli rule. “Success in Iraq could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace, and set in motion progress towards a truly democratic Palestinian state,” by depriving resistance groups fighting to liberate their lands of a “wealthy patron,” Bush said. “Without this outside support for terrorism [resistance to Isael's military occupation of Arab lands], Palestinians who are working for reform and long for democracy will be in a better position to choose new leaders. “True leaders who strive for peace; true leaders who faithfully serve the people. A Palestinian state must be a reformed and peaceful state that abandons forever the use of terror.” Bush also refreshed his commitment to a Middle East “roadmap to peace” based on two secure states living side by side, a blueprint he agreed at Israel's request to put on hold until after elections there. Erekat dismissed Bush's comments as “strange” and criticised Washington — Israel's principal ally — for treating the Jewish state as “above the law.” A senior Israeli government official said that Israel “supports the remarks by President Bush which added nothing new to the `vision' of the future of the Middle East which he made in his speech on June 24 last year.” Sharon “also reiterated during a telephone conversation Wednesday with President Bush that he supports the roadmap on the condition that it translates precisely the vision of the US president,” said the official, who asked not to be named. Ererakat said that Bush's remarks were “a strange proposal.” “If the Iraqi issue is linked to the Palestinian question and the creation of a Palestinian state, then America is using double standards,” he said, slamming the way Washington deals with Israel “as the last occupying country in the world and a country above the law.” “The basis for creating a Palestinian state is putting an end to the occupation which prevents the Palestinian people from living a normal life and especially prevents the holding of elections and the existence of a democratic process,” he said. He said that Bush knew “perfectly well” that Sharon's new right-wing government “will continue to expand settlements, increase the violence and destroy this vision.” Sharon outmanoeuvres rival After manoeuvring Netanyahu out of the foreign ministry, Sharon saddled him with a daunting new task fraught with political risk — reviving Israel's recession-hit economy. Sharon granted Netanyahu's demands for broader powers, including control over sales of state companies and independence in policy making. Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former army chief of staff who has backed Sharon's tough military policies against the Palestinian revolt for independence, will remain in his post. Likud has built a coalition with the centrist Shinui Party, the ultra-nationalist National Union and the National Religious Party, a champion of Jewish settlements on occupied land. All four parties favour a hard line with the Palestinians, but the National Union Party, with seven seats, takes the most extreme view. Some of its leaders advocate pushing Palestinians out of the West Bank and annexing the land to the Jewish state. Sharon, 75, won reelection on a wave of support for the right amid dozens of Palestinian suicide bombings. A decision by the centre-left Labour Party to stay out of the new coalition left Sharon without the more moderate partner he sought ahead of anticipated US pressure for concessions to the Palestinians after any US-led war on Iraq. Also on Thursday, troops discovered a car bomb being assembled in the West Bank and blew up the home of a suicide bomber in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, the army said. A roadside bomb exploded next to an Israeli bus near Qalqilya in the West Bank but no casualties were reported. Israeli forces destroy three houses in Gaza raid, three in Nablus In addition, the Israeli army on Thursday destroyed three houses and arrested an activist from President Yasser Arafat's Fateh movement during a raid into the southern Gaza town of Rafah, Palestinian security officials said. Around 30 tanks and three bulldozers took part in the dawn foray into the Palestinian self-rule town on the Israeli-controlled border with Egypt. In the West Bank, the army destroyed thee houses in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus in the north. One of the houses dynamited belonged to Fateh activist Mohammad Abu Zur, accused of having taken part in an attack on a Jewish settlement. The blast destroyed two nearby houses.
Sharon swears in hard-right govt, puts peace
efforts on hold JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s hard-right government took office early Friday with a mission to rescue the country’s declining economy but looked set to wait for a broader coalition to tackle the key issue of peace with the Palestinians.
The line-up which received
the Israeli parliament’s confidence is one of the most right-wing in the
Jewish state’s history and drew early warnings of insurmountable
differences within the cabinet leading to a collapse. The
Israeli stock exchange reacted positively to Sharon’s promise to focus his
government’s efforts on economic recovery and the appointment of the
charismatic freemarketeer Benjamin Netanyahu as finance minister. But
Israeli opinion was doubtful that, with diplomacy novice Silvan Shalom
taking the post of foreign minister and two pro-settler parties pulling the
cabinet to the right, the government could achieve any other results. According
to an opinion poll published on Friday in the Yediot Aharonot daily, 64
percent of Israelis think it will be incapable of ”stopping terror
attacks” by Palestinian groups or even curbing them substantially. The
same poll revealed that 52 percent of Israelis also think Sharon’s new
cabinet is not capable of “promoting an agreement with the
Palestinians”, while 46 percent expressed the opposite view. In
his swearing-in speech Thursday night in parliament, Sharon was
non-committal on the thorny issue of Palestinian statehood -- saying it
would be dealt with “in due time” -- and appeared to put the Palestinian
issue on the back burner. US
President George W. Bush has upped the pressure on the Palestinians to
reform their security and their institutions but also on Israel to prove its
commitment to the so-called “roadmap”
for Middle East peace which was drafted by the quartet of diplomatic
players and calls for a Palestinian state by 2005. But
commentators said that a settlement with the Palestinians was a low priority
for both Sharon and Bush, as war clouds were gathering above Iraq. “The
US president is now busy with preparations for the occupation of Iraq, and
the prime minister is more interested in reviving the economy and dealing
with issues of religion and state,” the
daily Haaretz said in an editorial. “As
far as both of them are concerned, the diplomatic process can, and must,
wait until their agenda clears up from more urgent matters,” editorialist
Aluf Benn added. Some
commentators have already suggested the new government, which was born after
intense political wrangling, could be reshuffled before long and that Sharon
would need to bring in the Labour party and dump the extreme-right to take
the peace process forward. Likud
tried to lure Labour into a national unity government such as the one Sharon
set up after his first electoral victory in March 2001, but new Labour
leader Amram Mitzna consistently refused. He
responded to Sharon’s inaugural speech by promising to lead a
”responsible but fighting” opposition. “You have an opposition party
which Israel needs very, very much,” he told Sharon in front of the
Knesset. Analyst
Gerald Steinberg predicted that even if Mitzna stood firm, his ailing party
could split and some members could decide to join Sharon “within a few
weeks, in the context of a war with Iraq or immediately afterwards.” This
week Bush also hinted that the political landscape in the region could
change drastically after his troops wrap up their campaign to remove Saddam,
and made his least ambiguous linkage to date between the Iraqi crisis and
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Success
in Iraq could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace, and set in
motion progress towards a truly democratic Palestinian state,” he said in
a speech to a think-tank. Israeli
newspapers did not rate the new Israeli government’s chances of survival,
and concurred that Israel was now waiting for the Iraqi war to be over to
face the issues which usually top its agenda. “The
truth is that everyone is counting on George Bush and Saddam Hussein. In
political and diplomatic circles, in security and economic circles, the
approaching war in Iraq has become a kind of deus ex machina that will
overturn the situation and bring a redeemer to Zion,” was Maariv’s
sarcastic analysis.
Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.
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