Sharon
Rips Up 'Road-Map'
By Eric Silver
18 August 2004
The Independent
Israel
issued tenders yesterday for 1,001 new homes in West Bank settlements,
despite its commitment to a building freeze under the international
"road-map" for peace. It is expected to publish another 633
within the next few months.
According to the
mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot daily, Ariel Sharon's government is
planning to invest 65 million shekels (£8m) in construction and
to subsidise 50 per cent of the infrastructure costs. The programme
was approved earlier, but then suspended by the Prime Minister. Israeli
sceptics and Western diplomats suspect that Mr Sharon hopes to appease
right-wing critics of his plan to evacuate 21 Gaza Strip and West Bank
settlements by the end of next year. He faces a crucial meeting tonight
of his 3,000-member Likud party convention.
Pinhas Wallerstein,
a veteran settler leader, commented: "Sharon has no intention of
building even one of these houses. This is ugly manipulation, a fraudulent
ploy ahead of the Likud conference."
But Yariv Oppenheimer,
director general of the Peace Now campaign, denounced Mr Sharon for
"shutting the door in the face of the whole world." There
was, he insisted, a clear commitment to freeze all settlement activity.
"To issue tenders for more than 1,000 new units," Mr Oppenheimer
added, "is very negative."
Peter Carter, number
two at the British embassy in Tel Aviv, condemned the announcement as
very unhelpful to both the road-map and Mr Sharon's disengagement plan.
"We are very disappointed," he said.
Paul Patin, a spokesman
for the American embassy in Tel Aviv, said: "Israel has accepted
the road-map. We expect Israel to honour its commitments."
Although the road-map,
drafted by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union
and Russia, calls for a total building freeze, Israel has its own interpretation.
Mr Sharon contends that he is free to build for "natural growth"
within the existing settlement boundaries.
A high-level Washington
delegation is due to arrive in Israel soon to examine settlement expansion
and the failure to evacuate illegal settler outposts, but American diplomacy
is hamstrung by the fact that while it has never endorsed the Israeli
reading, the Bush administration has acquiesced in it.
Most of the settlements
for which new tenders were issued are close to the pre-1967 "green
line" border. Israel hopes to keep them even after a final peace
agreement. But the locations of some of the new tenders, such as the
towns of Ma'aleh Adumim, Ariel and Kiryat Arba, are well inside occupied
territory.