Sharon tells Israeli lawmakers he will move some settlements

JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told lawmakers Tuesday he will move some Jewish settlements as part of an emerging plan for Israel to impose a border in the West Bank without negotiations with the Palestinians, a participant at the meeting said.

Palestinian officials said one-sided actions would never lead to peace and urged Israel to focus instead on returning to talks. The Palestinians worry that any plan carried out unilaterally by Israel would fall far short of their demands for a state in the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, with a capital in Jerusalem.

Sharon's statement Tuesday to members of parliament's Defense and Foreign Affairs committee appeared to be part of a campaign to prepare Israeli public opinion for an undefined West Bank pullback. Some reports said the move would include both removing some settlements and annexing some West Bank land.

Change of direction

Sharon, a key architect of the settler movement, has shied away previously from saying he would evacuate West Bank settlements, and his hard-line Likud Party has traditionally opposed giving up control of any of the West Bank, seized by Israel along with Gaza in the 1967 war.

The actions appear motivated at least in part by a need to placate an Israeli public increasingly unhappy with the occupation of millions of Palestinians and three years of violence.

Discussions of the plan may also aim at pressuring the Palestinians in peace talks.

Sharon has been talking for weeks about vague steps Israel would take on its own. Vice Premier Ehud Olmert last week proposed -- in what many interpreted as a trial balloon for Sharon -- that Israel abandon peace talks and withdraw from parts of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.

Interviewed on Israel TV late Tuesday, Olmert said, "I think we will have to move out of many settlements that are not in the main settlement blocs."

Sharon told the parliament committee Tuesday he remained committed to the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, which foresees a Palestinian state by 2005 but does not spell out its exact borders.

But Sharon said difficulties in implementing the road map could lead him to reveal his own plan. "I myself am at this time putting together a series of ideas, perhaps a new program, the same program perhaps that everyone is talking about," Israel Radio quoted him as saying.

Likud lawmaker Ehud Yatom said Sharon had told him that his plan includes evacuating settlements and that "he talked about a complex and difficult plan that would be controversial."

Media reports say Sharon's plan includes the evacuation of the 16 Jewish settlements in Gaza -- where about 6,000 settlers live -- as well as the possible evacuation of some West Bank settlements and the annexation of others.

Israel would then consider turning a partially built security barrier that cuts through much of the West Bank into a permanent border with the Palestinians, according to the reports.

Sharon says he would consider acting on his own if Palestinians did not crack down on militant groups as required by the U.S.-backed "road map."

International mediators and the United States oppose one-sided moves, arguing that the borders of a future Palestinian state should come as a result of a negotiated peace deal.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not comment on any plans by Sharon "until we know more precisely what it is the Israeli government might be prepared to do." He reiterated that Washington wants Israel to freeze settlement building and remove unauthorized settlement outposts as called for in the road map.

Palestinian officials condemned outright any one-sided Israeli moves, saying only a mutually negotiated agreement could lead to peace.

"The occupation is unilateral, the wall is unilateral, the settlements are unilateral ... unilateral will not lead to peace between Palestinians and Israelis," Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said.

Erekat has been meeting in recent weeks with Sharon's bureau chief Dov Weisglass to help prepare for an expected summit between Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia aimed at renewing peace efforts.

"I urge the Israeli government to give the bilateral approach the chance it deserves," he said.

Jewish settler spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef denounced the idea of removing settlements as "illegal and immoral."

Sharon's two hard-line partners, the National Union and the National Religious Party, threatened to quit the government if Sharon evacuates populated settlements. With a total 13 seats, the two parties could bring down the coalition if they left.

On Tuesday, Israeli troops shot and killed Faris Ibrahim, 16, at the Qalandiya refugee camp outside Jerusalem, hospital officials said. Ibrahim was among youths throwing stones at nearby Israeli soldiers, the hospital officials said.

In the village of Taffuh near Hebron in the West Bank, three Palestinians were killed in an explosion in a house. Palestinians and Israeli military sources said they were Hamas activists trying to make a bomb. No Israeli troops were in the area, both sides said.