Barak Mulls Unilateral Separation from Palestinians

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is to hold a meeting Thursday with senior strategy aides to discuss a unilateral separation plan between Israel and the Palestinians as a standby idea for a peace agreement, sources in Barak's office said.

In Barak's estimate, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had not totally given up hopes on a final-status agreement with Israel through negotiations, but Israel should prepare for the scenario that such a deal could not be reached.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh and Mike Herzog, head of the General Staff's Strategic Department of Israel Defense Forces, and other security officials will attend the meeting to outline to Barak their fallback plans in case that the violence between Israel and the Palestinians continues and escalates.

The violence in the past three weeks, which was triggered by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to a disputed shrine in the Old City of Jerusalem on September 28, had killed more than 100 people and wounded thousands, most of them Arabs.

At an emergency summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, United States President Bill Clinton, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other world leaders persuaded Barak and Arafat to reach a cease-fire understanding on Tuesday.

Though both parties had implemented part of the truce agreement since then, sporadic clashes between them continued throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The situation made Barak and his aides mull a plan to separate Israelis from Palestinians "for the promotion of Israeli interests, without waiting for a peace accord with the Palestinians," security forces said.

In various interviews with Israel media Wednesday, Sneh, for the first time, discussed the unilateral separation plan publicly.

He said Barak asked him to prepare such an alternative to a peace treaty, adding that the separation plan was still in its early stages.

"The idea is that if we don't have an agreement with the Palestinians, we would try to shape the reality here in the closest possible way to what we would like to achieve through an agreement," said Sneh.

In such a plan, according to Sneh's remarks, Israel would pull back its troops from some areas of the West Bank, erect border barriers, and set up crossing points.

Sneh did not elaborate on the map of Israeli troops withdrawal and where the new line between Israel and the Palestinians would run.

But he stressed that none of the 144 Jewish settlements dotting the occupied Palestinian territories would be dismantled. However, he did not explain how these settlements could be linked to Israel in a situation of total separation.

In response to Sneh's plan, Palestinian Culture and Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo had already said that such a plan "would turn the Palestinians' life into hell."

"This will destroy our lives. This will destroy our economic life. This will separate and divide Palestinian territories into enclaves," he said in a news conference on Wednesday. "This is racism. This a racial separation, racial isolation in enclaves."

It is estimated that nearly 110,000 Palestinians are working in Israel and enter the Jewish state everyday through border crossings. Sneh did not explain whether they will still be allowed entry into Israel once the separation plan is implemented.



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