PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELIS SCEPTICAL OF THE ROAD MAP, IRNA SAYS
TEL AVIV 30 May (IPS) Following the meeting Thursday between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas, which both leaders described as "very positive", Iran’s official news agency IRNA said that Israel's conditional and ostensibly half-hearted acceptance of the American- backed peace plan, known as the roadmap, has drawn "mixed and ambivalent reactions from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and widespread scepticism from ordinary
Palestinians".
The two leaders meeting, the second in as many weeks at Sharon's Jerusalem office on Thursday and ahead of their coming Summit with President George W. Bush in the Jordanian port of Aqaba on 5 June, was preceded by announcement from Abou Mazen telling the Israeli newspaper "Yediot Ahranot" that he expected to reach an agreement with the Palestinian radical organisation HAMAS declaring a cease-fire with Israel.
In an unusual news dispatch and commentary on both the PA-HAMAS cease-fire talks and Sharon-Abbas meeting, dated from Al-Khalil (Naplus), IRNA quoted Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, the founder and spiritual leader of the Organisation as having said that his movement would agree to a ceasefire if the Zionist regime (Israel) stopped killing Palestinian civilians and put an end to the wanton destruction of Palestinian homes.
"Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Mahmoud Zah'har said the ceasefire would be observed both in the West Bank and Gaza as well as inside 1948- Palestine provided the Zionist occupation forces leave Palestinian population centres, stop targeting Palestinian civilians in the context of the cease-fire and release thousands of Palestinian detainees now incarcerated in several detention camp throughout Palestine", the agency added.
Israel Radio reported Friday that Sharon also intends to give permanent permits for Palestinian officials to travel between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, increase the amount of tax money transferred to the PA, allow 25.000Palestinian labourers to work in Israel and to free several dozen Palestinians held in Israeli jails, including two leading Palestinians militants.
"While welcoming the Zionist regime's formal approval of the plan on 23 May, PA officials strongly rejected the 14 "reservations", which, using the words of an Israeli journalist, "effectively turned this approval from a diplomatic initiative into an Israeli diktat of a Palestinian surrender agreement", IRNA said.
PA Information Minister Nabil Amre, speaking for Premier Mahmoud Abbas, dismissed the 14 reservations as "irrelevant as far as we are concerned".
"This and other statements by Palestinian officials, who now generally speak in one voice, underscore the serious discrepancy between the Israeli and PA acceptance of the roadmap", the pro-reformists Iranian news agency continued, adding: "Needless to say, this discrepancy is likely to develop into a serious crisis if
Sharon clings to the draconian reservations, or more correctly, objections, attached to his acceptance of the roadmap".
According to IRNA’s commentary, in Israel itself, the qualified approval of the roadmap has generated a "lot of scepticism and even cynicism", with some Israeli writers having interpreted the decision to accept the roadmap as a "disingenuous step aimed first and foremost at appeasing the United States, Israel's guardian-ally, by ending weeks of stalling".
"Sharon is banking on the Palestinians refusal of the Israeli conditions and hopes that the Palestinians would blow the whole process by carrying out terror attacks so that he doesn't have to dismantle settlements. That may well happen. I am sure the radicals on both sides will help him in that and make his task easier", IRNA quoted Menahem Klein, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies, as having opined.
"In other words, Israel would be the foe and judge at the same time and reserves the right to veto each and every step and phase leading up to the implementation of the roadmap", IRNA observed, after enumerating Israel’s main reservations and objections to the US-EU-UN and Russian sponsored plan.
In fact, the commentary noted, Sharon not only hopes to induce Palestinians to give him an excuse to throw the roadmap off his shoulders. He has actually been provoking them to retaliate for his army's unceasing incursions, acts of killings and daily demolitions of Palestinian homes.
Indeed, on the very day Israel approved the roadmap, Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers reinvaded the town of Tulkarm and the nearby refugee camp bearing its name. Israeli troops rampaged through the camp for several days, terrorising and beating civilians.
Sharon and his aides must be praying that this unmitigated repression of the Palestinians and vandalism of their property and infrastructure will boomerang sooner rather than later so that he could obtain an excuse to dislodge from the roadmap, or at least throw the ball back into the Palestinian court.
Baffled Iranian political analysts were at pain Friday explaining the meaning of the dispatch, reported by IRNA on Thursday on its English service, or whether it carries in message?
"There is no doubt that the writer is a Palestinian, might be Bassam Abou Sharif, a former aide to Yaser Arafat and a promoter of Israel-Palestinian co-existence who writes for many Arab and international publications from his home in Ramallah", said Nina Kamran, a former diplomatic correspondent of Iran Press Service.
"You don’t have to look for why this otherwise strange piece of news and views, as it may be one of those strange things that happens in Iran, that land of everything possible", she added stoically. ENDS HAMAS PA TALKS 30503