Fuente : Palestinian National Authority
http://www.pna.gov.ps/

EU Commissioner: Sharon’s Disengagement Plan Distracts World’s Attention from Israel’s Military Actions in OPt

/noticias.info/ The Representative of the European Commission in the Palestinian territories, Jacque Philippe, said that the Israeli Prime Minister’s purported disengagement plan and unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, was inapplicable as it is intended only to draw the attention of both the regional and international public opinions away from the ongoing Israeli violations of the Palestinian people’s rights.

Philippe, in a special interview with the IPC, was quoted as saying that due to inability to implement Sharon’s plan for the time being, the traumatized Palestinians should be given more attention and help.

He mentioned that the EU has been relentlessly working on the said withdrawal plan, especially the need to have such a pullout done in coordination with the Palestinian side and as a part of the internationally-backed "Road Map" peace plan, provided that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank were not increased and the border crossings be reopened.

The EU commissioner emphasized the need to ensure international monitoring mechanisms by the Quartet (United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia) not by the United States exclusively as Israel wants.

Asked by the IPC’s about his stance towards the disengagement plan, Philippe believed that such a plan would never go into effect as it has been designed to draw the world’s attention away from the Apartheid Wall being built by Israel through the West Bank and the ongoing Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.

He also added that "when Sharon talks about withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, he must be preparing for an invasion of a Palestinian city or village."

Also, he said that it was clear that Sharon’s plan bore no hope for a solution, therefore parties should involve in relief work and reconstruct what Sharon has so far destroyed as well as set a feasibility studies for the next fifty years.

Regarding the activities of the European Commission, Mr. Philippe told IPC’s that the commission was working on having a pre-negotiated Israeli withdrawal with the Palestinian side as well as increasing no single Israeli settlement in the West Bank and having the border crossings reopened, especially the commercial ones.

In response to a question on the real reasons behind Israel’s decision to pullout troops from the Gaza Strip and possible subsequent damages, Jacque Philippe believed that the said conditions set by the commission for any Israeli withdrawal were designed to avoid any side effects of Sharon’s plan.

The EU official asserted on the necessity that such a plan be pre-negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians and to be included in the "Road Map", he explained.

He made clear that one of the major side effects of such a plan was the fact that President Bush has approved it, despite it allowed Israel to keep constructing more settlements in the West Bank instead of those it would be evacuating from the Gaza Strip. Such a matter was utterly rejected by the European Union.


”In my personal point of view, I think that the most negative point in this plan is the rarity of the opportunity to have an economic activity in the Gaza Strip once the plan is executed. And this what the World Bank believes in case the crossing borders are closed. Then a real human catastrophe will likely happen for the Palestinian population in the Strip,” Philippe further clarified.

Nevertheless, he believed that the European Commission should back the plan, “yet we should rather talk now about the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli troops, including the gross violation of Palestinians’ human rights.”

“What is going on in the Strip is clearly similar to what happened in the West Bank, as Israel has declared it would withdraw from the West Bank after it finishes a large-scale operation. However, Israel is still occupying the West Bank and has not so far pulled out its troops,” Mr. Philippe opined.

Asked by the IPC whether it was possible for a Palestinian viable state to be established under no geographical contiguity (separate West Bank and Gaza Strip), the European official answered by saying, “never, there are people who are currently preparing an ‘economic road map’ as a part of the political 'Road Map'. Among these figures are members of the European Commission, who simply say that Gaza can never keep viable alone, so West Bank should be connected to it and to other neighboring countries, including Israel, especially that Gaza does not have natural resources."

As for his position concerning the "Road Map", Mr. Philippe told IPC that he supported the plan as a commissioner of the European Union, but he asserted that what was blocking the implementation of such a peace plan were the new factors of the plan itself, mainly the ‘free monitoring’, which Israel has opposed and wanted that the Americans are the ones to monitor.

"Such a ‘free monitoring’ is the item that verifies those abiding by the plan, therefore, all the Quartet’s members should take part in this monitoring," Mr. Philippe concluded.


Jewish Terrorism: Jewish Terrorists plan to Attack Al-Aqsa holy mosque in Jerusalem

Israeli sources declared that those Jewish extremists Attempt to Crash a Plane on Al-Aqsa, Or Kill a Muslim leader
25/07/2004

Palestine Media Center – PMC

Israel’s Security Minister warned Saturday of a possible attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Israeli-occupied Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest site, by Jewish terrorist groups seeking to derail Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to unilaterally “disengage” from the Gaza Strip.

Israeli security officials told Ha’aretz daily that an attempt to crash a plane packed with explosives on Al-Aqsa was one of the scenarios drawn out by the terrorists.

“We have a considerable amount of disquieting information according to which it is not only academic ideas but concrete projects,” the Israeli Internal Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said, without elaborating.

His comments follow a report by Israel’s secret service that there is an increasing threat of an attack on Sharon by right-wing groups who oppose his plan, nine years after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish terrorist late in 1995.

“The level of threat (of an attack) on the Temple Mount (Al-Aqsa Mosque compound) by Jewish extremists and fanatics, in order to ... be a catalyser for the change of the entire political process, has risen during the past few months, especially during the last few weeks, more than ever before,” Hanegbi said.

Hanegbi was speaking to Israel’s Channel 2 television’s “Meet the Press” program on Saturday.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied east Jerusalem is known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Holy Sanctuary, and is revered by Jews as the “Temple Mount,” which they claim to be the site of two ancient biblical temples.

The Jewish extremists would take advantage of the fact that the shrine served as “the most sensitive, most volatile, most sacred site for Muslims” in order to attack either the mosque itself or its Muslim worshippers, Hanegbi said.

“There are troubling indications of purposeful thinking, and not detached philosophy... There is a danger that [extremists] would make use of the most explosive site, in the hope that a chain reaction would bring about the destruction of the peace process,” he added.

Earlier this month, Hanegbi warned against the threat of a major political assassination in Israel by Jewish extremists.

Attempt to Crash Explosives-packed Drone on Al-Aqsa

The Shin Bet security service and the police are preparing for a number of possible terror attack scenarios at the sacred Old City site, Israeli security sources said on Saturday night, Ha’aretz reported Sunday.

The newspaper quoted sources saying that possible actions included an attempt to crash a drone packed with explosives on Al-Aqsa compound, or a manned suicide attack with a light aircraft during mass Muslim worship on the compound.

Other possibilities include an attempt by right-wing Jewish extremists to assassinate a prominent Al-Aqsa Muslim leader, perhaps from the Waqf Islamic trust.

The aim of the Al-Aqsa attack conspiracy would be to carry out a visible provocation that would spark violent confrontation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Israeli security sources told Ha’aretz.

Sharon’s visit to the compound four years ago sparked violent clashes with Muslim worshippers that set off the ongoing Palestinian Intifada (uprising) against the 37-year old Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Sharon plans to push forward with his plan to re-deploy Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, where more than 7,500 illegal Jewish settlers live in heavily-guarded enclaves among 1.3 million Palestinians, by the end of 2005.

Jewish settlers are meanwhile planning to form a “human chain” on Sunday stretching some 90 kilometers (55 miles) from the Gaza Strip to Jerusalem and called at the weekend for thousands of Israelis to take part.

The demonstration is part of a campaign by settlers against Sharon’s plan.

A spokesman for the illegal “Gush Katif” settlement bloc in the Strip said Saturday “tens of thousands of people,” would join the chain.

The human chain was set to start at the foot of Jerusalem’s Al-Buraq Wall (known to Jews as the Wailing Wall, and claimed to be the holiest site in Judaism).

Old, Grassroots Jewish Terrorism

In the early 1980s, the Shin Bet security service broke up a Jewish clandestine, terrorist group that was planning a large-scale attack on Al-Aqsa compound in order to torpedo the peace accord with Egypt and prevent the dismantling of illegal settlements on the Sinai Peninsula.

Yehuda Etzion, one of the terrorist leaders of a plot in the early 1980s to blow up Islamic mosques, said Sunday that blowing up the Dome of the Rock, the gilded mosque at the center of Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, was a “worthy” goal, but that it was not the proper way to fight the disengagement initiative, Ha’aretz reported.

“Losing one’s patience after so many years of distortion is something understandable,” Etzion told Army Radio. “Is this a worthy act? First of all, it is worthy. On the other hand, it is unworthy as an act to thwart the disengagement.”

In 1982, American-Israeli Alan Goodman staged a shooting spree outside the mosques, killing two Palestinians and touching off days of rioting.

Earlier Warnings

Hanegbi’s warning was the latest in a series of warnings by Israeli officials.

Last week, the head of Israel’s internal security service said that as many as 200 Jewish settlers want to see Prime Minister Sharon dead because of his Gaza plan, although Shin Bet chief Aviv Dichter claimed that his agents had not uncovered any specific assassination plot.

Speaking to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Avi Dichter said most of the extremists on the list lived in illegal West Bank settlements, although there were also a small number in the Gaza Strip, according to Israel Radio.

“The Shin Bet chief was very clear in his comments. Dozens of people, with the support of some 150 others, want the death of the prime minister, in fact his assassination,” MP Ran Cohen of the opposition Meretz Party told the radio.

“These people are armed, they are found in several settlements, (Dichter) must stop them,” he said.

On July 5, Israel’s parliament called for a debate on the threat posed by Jewish extremists opposed to settlement evacuation, and Prime Minister Sharon for the first time acknowledged publicly that he feels at risk.

Dichter’s warnings struck a deep chord because many Israeli politicians and security officials still blame themselves for ignoring the warning signs ahead of the 1995 assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Jewish terrorist.

Nine months ago, Shahar Dvir-Zeliger, a suspect in a Jewish underground terror group affair, told authorities a prominent West Bank settler activist had planned a “Temple Mount attack.” Zeliger cited two other names of West Bank settlers, suggesting the two were involved in the attack conspiracy.

Last Thursday, the so-called “Temple Mount Faithful” group petitioned the High Court, asking to be given clearance to go up to the Holy Site for prayers later this week.


25/07/2004 notas_de_prensa_archivo