Palestinians urge world to challenge Bush policy

Furious Palestinians tried to rally the world today against US president George W. Bush's decision to break with longtime US and international policy to say Israel could keep parts of the West Bank captured in war.

Bush coupled what Israel hailed as a historic statement yesterday with an endorsement of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral Gaza pullout plan and a negation of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.

The US "guarantees" gave Sharon what he wanted to win over Israeli sceptics of his plan to uproot Gaza's 20 settlements and four of 120 in the West Bank while retaining "for eternity" larger enclaves there with the bulk of the 230 000 settlers.

However, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, criticised Bush for ignoring the wishes of Palestinians, while the European Union emphasised it would not accept border changes unless they were agreed by both sides.

Ahmed Qurie, the Palestinian prime minister, said he had proposed an emergency meeting of the quartet of the European Union, US, Russia and UN, patrons of the "road map" for peace - stymied by unrelenting violence - and a Palestinian state.

Emergency summit

He also called for an emergency summit of Arab countries. The Arab League accused Washington of bias. "This is a catastrophe that has to be dealt with," Qurie told reporters. "What is fixed is that we have rights and we will defend them."

Palestinians said bluntly Bush had killed negotiations.

Israeli officials say the Palestinians thwarted talks by failing to stop militants carrying out suicide attacks on Israelis.

Informed of Palestinians' reaction, Sharon was quoted by two well-informed Israeli columnists covering his White House visit as saying: "They have a better understanding of the significance of (Bush's) letter than most Israelis. I said that we were going to deal them a lethal blow, and they were dealt a lethal blow."

Over decades of Republican and Democratic administrations, the US had officially viewed Israeli settlements implanted since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war as an obstacle to peace. Washington had also not come out so openly in rejecting the demand of Palestinians dispossessed in the 1948 war of Israel's creation to go back to lands now inside the Jewish state.

Bush, who like Sharon has made a battle against "terrorism" paramount in road map peacemaking, has now shifted to view at least some of the Jewish enclaves as permanent. "The fanatical Israeli rulers are wrong and so are those who support them and you know who I mean," said Yasser Arafat, the president of Palestine, in his first official reaction. "Our fate is that we are the defenders of our land and our holy shrines and our rights...and the right of the refugees to return to their homeland."

Plan faces party hudle

Sharon still has a key hurdle to surmount before any pullback can begin - a binding May 2 ballot among the 200 000 members of his right-wing Likud party on approving what he dubs a plan of "disengagement" from conflict with the Palestinians. Opinion polls in Israel have consistently shown strong support for jettisoning Gaza, a power base for Islamic militant groups sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state. One poll today found 58% Likud support for a Gaza pullout.

Sharon has said Israel would reap security benefits by leaving its Gaza enclaves - all small and fortified against hostile surrounding Palestinians - while strengthening its sleek, spacious suburban settlements in the West Bank.

Bush's statements and an exchange of letters with Sharon in the same vein figured to garner him more backing from pro-Israel conservatives and Jewish voters in the US presidential election in November.

However, the message could harm US interests in the Arab world, undercutting its efforts to stabilise Iraq. "It undermines hope for a just and comprehensive peace, inflames feelings of enmity towards America and opens the door towards retaking these rights by force, through all legitimate means of resistance," said Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.

An Arab League spokesperson accused Bush of pro-Israel bias that put the Middle East in an unprecedented diplomatic bind, saying: "This is a fundamental milestone in the Arab-Israeli conflict."

In his letter to Sharon, Bush said the steps the Israeli prime minister described in the disengagement plan will make "a real contribution towards peace".

However, Annan criticised Bush for ignoring Palestinian wishes in implicitly accepting Israel's claim to some West Bank settlements.

Misgivings also rippled through Europe, with France rejecting any one-sided moves to change Middle East borders. "I have reservations about the unilateral, bilateral questioning of international law," Jacques Chirac, the French president, said. Russia called for UN Security Council resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be honoured.

A senior Israeli official said Sharon expected the pullback to be completed "sometime in 2005" and hoped many Gaza settlers would choose to put down new roots in the Negev desert and help develop the economically depressed area in southern Israel. - Reuters