Sharon begins dismantling settlements; Abbas keeps gabbing
June 9th, 2003

Israel has begun dismantling settler outposts in the West Bank today. Though these first few are uninhabited and basically an RV or two, they are the first of ninety-four to be removed in the coming days. It's a major statement on Israel's part, and the beginning of its fulfillment of the road map's first phase. This is costing Sharon big-time with his support base, and many settlers have begun non-violent resistance.

Sharon negotiated with the settlers, but they couldn't find any compromise. So Sharon proceeded anyway, because that's his obligation under the road map. Discount the move as petty if you will, but the PA hasn't arrested one terrorist yet. Yesterday, however, the terrorists did carry out three shooting attacks, killing five Israeli soldiers.
In the meantime, what's Mr. Abbas been up to? What's the game plan for dealing with Hamas, especially since they balked at his cease-fire negotiations? He hasn't given up on the path of yackety-yak: "We need a dialogue that leads to a truce." And if Hamas were to refuse? "We insist on this dialogue," he said, "but in the end we will not force anybody to do so."

Despite the fearsome suggestion that Abbas might go so far as to insist on the negotiations should Hamas fail to muster the politesse to sit down and chat, I'm not sure that's good enough. Especially considering that Hamas is a terrorist-rejectionist group that denounces all negotiations with Israel and calls for its very destruction. Did he expect differently?

The Palestinian Authority's information minister, Nabil Amr, was also asked whether under any circumstances the authority would call on its security forces to arrest and disarm militants. "We will not use weapons or force. We will tell them the dialogue will not go on forever; we need to reach a conclusion. The world will not wait for us." Nor will the peace process.

Hamas, for its part, reminded everyone that no matter what happens, it won't stop killing Israelis. They commented, "We oppose the Abu Mazen government's way of dialogue," whatever that means.


From the article, Israel begins dismantling settlement outposts in Ha'aretz, by Tovah Lazaroff, June 10, 2003:

"Israeli troops on Monday began dismantling uninhabited West Bank settlement outposts, taking down a few of the dozens of outposts Israel has to remove under a US-backed peace plan.

"The IDF said that many valuable lessons were learned from outpost removals in the past, and that this time the IDF would remove several outposts simultaneously in different areas, in order to prevent settlers from gathering at outposts and resisting in numbers."