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Israeli Security Officials Urge Cutting Ties With Palestinian Authority

Posted on: Sunday, 9 April 2006, 21:00 CDT

JERUSALEM _ The Israeli security Cabinet on Sunday recommended severing all ties with the Palestinian Authority, a step that would bar negotiations with President Mahmoud Abbas after the recent installation of a Palestinian government led by the militant group Hamas, officials said.

"Israel will have no contact with the Palestinian Authority, which is a hostile authority," said the recommendations, released by the prime minister's office. "The Palestinian Authority is one authority and does not have two heads. Relations with it will be reduced, and there will be no contact with it."

The full Israeli Cabinet is expected to adopt the recommendations this Sunday, formalizing moves already made to cut contacts with the new Hamas-led administration, which took office last month.

In the latest step on the ground, the Israeli army said it is suspending security coordination with Palestinian officers at the last functioning joint military liaison office near the West Bank city of Jericho. The Palestinians were ordered to leave the facility by midday Monday, the army said.

Israel has already halted the monthly transfer of about $50 million in tax revenues and customs duties it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, deepening the cash crisis in the financially strapped Palestinian Authority. The United States and European Union announced cuts in their aid to the Palestinian government Friday.

The Israeli security Cabinet meeting was chaired by acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and included senior ministers as well as top army officers and security chiefs. The group's recommendations included boycotting foreign diplomats who meet with Hamas officials, a tactic that was used to isolate the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.

This time, however, the recommendations said that "there will be no personal disqualification of the chairman of the Palestinian Authority," a reference to Abbas.

Assaf Shariv, a government spokesman, explained that there could be contacts with Abbas, but no peace negotiations with him as long as Hamas will not recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous agreements with the Israelis, The Associated Press reported.

In an interview published Sunday in The Washington Post, Olmert was quoted as saying that he would not try to hold peace talks with Abbas because he lost authority after Hamas took power, and that talks could only be held with the Hamas-led government if it met the conditions set by the international community.

Olmert's remarks and the security Cabinet's recommendations appeared to rule out the option of Israel negotiating with Abbas, a moderate who advocates peace talks, as a way to bypass the Hamas government, which rejects talks with Israel.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas has said that his government would not object to Abbas pursuing talks with the Israelis, and Abbas has appealed for a resumption of negotiations to reach a final peace settlement.

However Olmert, whose centrist Kadima Party won the recent Israeli election, has said that if attempts to negotiate fail, he will move ahead with a plan to unilaterally withdraw from much of the West Bank while keeping large blocs of Israeli settlements, setting Israel's final borders by 2010.

Palestinian leaders have rejected the plan, calling it an imposed solution that leaves them without enough territory for a viable state.

As Israel raised the political pressure on Hamas, it kept up its punishing artillery barrages in the northern Gaza Strip after firings of crude rockets into Israel by Palestinian militants. Israel has ratcheted up its response to the rocket attacks, launching its heaviest strikes in the Gaza Strip since it withdrew from the territory last year.

In Sunday's shelling, a Palestinian taxi driver ferrying security officers to their position was killed, bringing to 14 the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since Friday, most of them militants targeted in airstrikes. A total of 30 people have been wounded, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza.

Israeli gunners have been authorized to fire closer to populated areas in recent days, and on Sunday students fled in panic from a school and distraught parents rushed to the scene after shells exploded nearby.

The army said it had fired more than 750 shells since Friday in response to 14 rockets that landed in southern Israel. The rockets caused no casualties.

After an emergency meeting of the Palestinian Cabinet, the government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, urged the international community to press Israel to halt its strikes. "We are astonished by the silence of the United States and the European union regarding the ongoing aggression," he said, although he refused to condemn the militant rocket attacks.

"Our people have a right to resist," he said.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian militant after surrounding his hideout in the town of Bethlehem. The army said the militant was shot after he emerged brandishing a rifle.

In a separate development, the Israeli Justice Ministry said that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has been in a coma since suffering a massive stroke on Jan. 4, will be declared permanently incapacitated Tuesday, officially ending his tenure. Olmert, who until now has served as acting prime minister, is to be named as Sharon's replacement. He is holding coalition talks to form a new government after last month's election.

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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune.

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Source: Chicago Tribune

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