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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Gaza withdrawal plan begins, Sharon says

Joel Greenberg Chicago Tribune

JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that Israel has begun coordinating a planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip with the Palestinians and that he is determined to see it through despite stepped-up threats by Jewish extremists.

However, deadly violence in the West Bank tested a truce declared by Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a Middle East summit last week.

Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinian militants armed with assault rifles as they approached the Jewish settlement of Bracha near the city of Nablus, the army said.

Palestinians said the gunmen, members of Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an offshoot of the dominant Fatah movement, were heading to a Palestinian village to defend it against a rumored attack by Jewish settlers.

After the killings, Ala Sanaqra, a leader of Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Nablus, vowed revenge and said the group was no longer bound by the truce declared by Abbas.

In another incident, a 14-year-old Palestinian was killed when Israeli motorists opened fire at youths who hurled stones at their vehicle on a road west of Ramallah, Palestinians said.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Sharon said the planned withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip this summer, originally conceived as a unilateral move, would be coordinated with the Palestinians.

“We already started to coordinate,” Sharon said. “I instructed to start coordination of our withdrawal from Gaza.”

Sharon said that working with the Palestinian Authority “is very important for us, first because I would like that the areas that we are leaving will not be in the future in the hands of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, or any of those radical terrorist organizations, but it will be in the hands of the Palestinian Authority.”

Secondly, Sharon said, “I would like the disengagement plan to be carried out quietly, without any Palestinian acts of terror.”

Sharon said that at last week’s Middle East summit he warned Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan that “they have to be very careful, because I don’t think that Israel will be able to implement the disengagement in Gaza under fire, and if there will be fire, our reaction will have to be very harsh and hard.”

Sharon vowed to press ahead with the pull-out plan despite death threats against him and members of his Cabinet by Jewish extremists opposed to the withdrawal.

“My own personal safety does not affect me and doesn’t affect my plans,” said Sharon, who is protected by a ring of bodyguards and tight security measures. “In my entire life, I have never surrendered to threats and I have no intention of starting now.”

Security around Sharon has been heightened considerably as opponents of the withdrawal have grown more strident. Their slogans and threats are being compared to incendiary right-wing protests against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before he was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist opposed to his agreements with the Palestinians.

In another development Tuesday, a disagreement between Israeli and Palestinian officials held up the planned hand-over of security control in the West Bank town of Jericho, the first of five cities to be restored to Palestinian control.

The Israelis want to retain the main roadblock at the entrance to Jericho and keep control over the adjacent village of Al-Awja, because a highway used by Israelis runs through it.

The Palestinians want the roadblock removed and control of Al-Awja restored to them, viewing those moves as an important precedent for the removal of roadblocks around other cities.

Abbas said he expected the dispute over Jericho to be resolved because “the agreement is about a withdrawal from areas and not from cities, so all the areas must be free, and clear of checkpoints.”