Palestinian Official Assails Sharon
AP
Date: 11-01-05
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON - The minister of state for Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian Cabinet on Tuesday accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of deception in withdrawing from Gaza.
Hind Khoury, who joined Mahmoud Abbas' cabinet in February, told reporters that "Gaza disengagement was used as a smoke screen to undermine Jerusalem as a subject for negotiations."
Khoury, who will be seeing White House and State Department officials this week, said Sharon has never had any intention of relinquishing more than 40 percent of the West Bank for a Palestinian state and is tightening Israel's hold on Jerusalem.
"There can be no viable state ? without a chance ? without Jerusalem as its capital," she said.
But, she said, using regulations to keep Arabs from establishing or returning to their homes in the city while building homes for Jews was making Jerusalem "strangulated."
"All these measures are making a Palestinian state an impossible dream," she said.
Khoury said the Palestinians would continue to use "peaceful means to resist the occupation."
Khoury spoke at a news conference sponsored by two Palestinian groups and the Middle East Institute, a private research group.
At the State Department, meanwhile, spokesman Sean McCormack called again on the Palestinian Authority "to take steps to act to prevent terror."
McCormack offered no criticism of Israel for a missile attack in Gaza that killed a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and a Palestinian who belongs to Hamas.
"We certainly understand Israel's right and need to defend itself," he said. "We understand that in any democratic society people look to their government to protect them."
Meanwhile, a delegation from the Israel Policy Forum, an American Jewish group that has called for a Palestinian crackdown on violence and a freeze on Jewish settlements, met Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Seymour Reich, the organization's president, said representatives told Rice "we stand ready to assist you in order to build a bridge from Prime Minister Sharon's courageous disengagement this summer to President Bush's vision of two states living side by side in peace and security."
Sharon's predecessor, Ehud Barak, in negotiations overseen by former President Clinton, offered to relinquish part of Jerusalem and virtually all of the West Bank in a settlement with the Palestinians.
Barak refused to permit Palestinian refugees to live in what would remain of Israel, and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat did not accept the Israeli offer, which had Clinton's endorsement.
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