Friday, November 28, 2003

Sharon Warns Palestinians: Make Peace or Risk Losing Land:
"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel warned Palestinians on Thursday to become more conciliatory or risk losing permanently some of the land they want for a state.

As he has in the past, Mr. Sharon hinted at possible but unnamed territorial concessions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, saying, 'Obviously, ultimately we will not be in all the places that we are in today.'"

But speaking at a news conference in Tel Aviv, he said he might make the decisions about territory unilaterally if he decides the Palestinian leadership is not serious about peace.

"They do not have unlimited time at their disposal," Mr. Sharon said. "While I am against setting artificial timetables, ultimately there is also a limit to our patience."

He added, "The Palestinians should have understood already that what they didn't get today, they may be unable to receive tomorrow."

Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, reacted angrily to Mr. Sharon's remarks, calling them "rude and arrogant."

"Sharon wants to declare an extreme position, and then to declare some measures that have no value that he will describe later as painful concessions," Mr. Shaath said. "But in fact they're painful concessions for us, not for him."

Mr. Sharon sounded a defiant note on Thursday on two points that have brought him criticism from the Bush administration. He said Israel was "accelerating" its construction of a barrier in the West Bank. The barrier, a combination of fencing, concrete, ditches and guardposts that is supposed to stretch some 360 miles, has consumed some stretches of West Bank land.

He also said Israel would retain some of the so-called settlement outposts, the rough clusters of trailers placed on isolated West Bank hilltops. Mr. Sharon said there were some outposts that were "of security importance of the first order."

The road map requires Israel to "immediately" dismantle "settlement outposts erected since March 2001." There are dozens of them.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/28/international/middleeast/28MIDE.html

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