Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told a parliament committee he would move some Jewish settlements as part of an emerging unilateral plan dealing with the conflict with the Palestinians, according to a participant.
Responding to Sharon's emerging ideas, Palestinian officials said on Tuesday that unilateral moves would never lead to peace and urged Israel to focus instead on returning to the negotiating table to work out a peace deal.
Sharon's reported statement 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 removing some settlements and annexing some West Bank land.
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.
A unilateral Israeli action would fall short of Palestinian demands for a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in east Jerusalem -- and therefore discussing it might pressure the Palestinians to be more flexible in peace talks. Sharon has warned that they would get less as a result of his moves than they might achieve in peace talks.
Sharon has been talking for weeks about vague unilateral steps, and Vice Premier Ehud Olmert last week proposed that Israel abandon peace talks and withdraw from parts of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
Interviewed on Israeli TV late on Tuesday, Olmert said, "I think we will have to move out of many settlements that are not in the main settlement blocs."
Sharon told members of parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday he would take unilateral steps before Israel reaches the desperation point in its stalled negotiations with the Palestinians, according to lawmakers present at the meeting.
"He said his first commitment is to the road map [peace plan], but if that fails we will have to make unilateral moves," Likud lawmaker Ehud Yatom said.
"I asked him if his plan includes evacuating settlements and he said yes. He talked about a complex and difficult plan that would be controversial," he said.
International mediators and the US oppose one-sided moves, arguing that the borders of a future Palestinian state should come as a result of a negotiated peace deal.
Peace talks that began with a framework peace accord in 1993 broke down in 2001 after violence erupted, bringing the hardline Sharon to power in a special election at the expense of moderate Ehud Barak, who had offered far-reaching concessions for peace.
Though Sharon has refused to describe his plan in detail, media reports say it includes the removal of the 16 Jewish settlements in Gaza as well as the possible evacuation of some West Bank settlements and the annexation of others.
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