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Sharon warned over grabbing land

An Israeli settler boy plays on a swing set as a man walks with his automatic rifle in the West Bank Jewish outpost settlement of Migron, east of Ramallah, on Wednesday. PHOTO: AP

The Palestinian prime minister warned Israel against unilateral moves, such as seizing parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying that an imposed solution would never be accepted by the Palestinians and would only intensify the conflict.

"The fire will burn, the terror will grow," he said.

In the Gaza Strip, three Palestinians were killed as Israeli troops, raiding a Gaza Strip refugee camp, met with stiff resistance.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and top members of his government have said repeatedly in recent days that they planned to take unilateral steps if peace efforts fail.

The comments by the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, marked the harshest Palestinian response yet to Sharon's emerging plan.

"It would be a terrible mistake to try and impose a solution on us by force," Qureia said in an interview with the Maariv daily, excerpts of which were published yesterday.

"The conflict will continue, the fire will burn, the terror will grow, no one will benefit from this," Qureia said.

Sharon and his deputy, Ehud Olmert, have said unilateral steps would include dismantling some Israeli settlements, but have also made clear that Israel would never withdraw from all the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to the frontier that existed before the 1967 Mideast war.

Even before Sharon began floating the idea of unilateral steps, Israel began building a separation barrier that at points runs near the 1967 lines, but in other areas is to dip deep into the West Bank. The barrier is to keep out Palestinian militants who have killed hundreds of Israelis since 2000.

"If he [Sharon] wants to build a fence and use it to annex Palestinian land, this is unacceptable," Qureia said.

"This will not help, this will not succeed, this will cause a disaster. You cannot build a fence on our land, to cage us like chickens and hope all will be well," the prime minister told Maariv.

"If you want a fence, go ahead. Build it on the Green Line [border]. In this instance we are prepared to contribute to the building costs. But to come and expropriate our land, to build the fence on Palestinian land, put us in cramped cages and then run away? We will never agree to this," Qureia said.

Qureia, however, said that he was confident that he could reach and agreement with Sharon.

"I believe it is possible. We have to return to the negotiating table immediately. We need to renew the trust," he said.

On Wednesday, Olmert caused an uproar in the Israeli parliament when he told lawmakers that Israel would have to draw new borders if it wanted to continue to exist as a Jewish state.

"We will have to withdraw to a different border than the one we have today and we will have to make concessions," Olmert told the parliament, adding that his hard-line coalition partners were living in "a virtual reality."

"We need to take the initiative. Rather than depend on Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's will to negotiate, we need to set the essential parameters for a solution," Olmert said.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops raided the Rafah refugee camp, killing three Palestinians and wounding 13, hospital officials said.

The army and witnesses said troops had surrounded a house and were attempting to arrest a Hamas militant.

Dozens of gunmen joined the battle as the residents of the house resisted, firing at the troops and throwing hand grenades, witnesses said, adding that the army had brought in helicopter gunships to suppress the fire.

Two of the dead were militants and one a bystander, Rafah hospital officials said.

Witnesses said that school children leaving their houses were caught in the cross fire.
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