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Palestinians dismiss settlement plan

Palestinians dismissed Israel's latest list of 28 settlement outposts to be dismantled under a US-backed peace plan as inadequate and deceptive, while a former Israeli security chief said the settlements no longer have a strategic defense role.

Security sources said on Tuesday that the 28 outposts were slated for removal under the US-backed "road map" peace plan, which requires Israel to take down all outposts built since March 2001.

The Peace Now watchdog group says there are at least 60 of them. Several dozen others established earlier are not addressed by the "road map."

Palestinians charge that the outposts -- and the foot-dragging in removing them -- are part of a larger effort to make it impossible for them to set up a state in the West Bank and Gaza. They view all Jewish settlements in the areas as illegal.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was dismissive of the list.

The list was disclosed a day after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told a convention of his hawkish party that even some of the larger veteran settlements would have to be torn down under a peace accord or moved as part of a proposed unilateral plan to disengage from the Palestinians.

Speaking on Tuesday in Jerusalem, Efraim Halevy, a former head of the Mossad secret service, said that the willingness to remove settlements was connected to the US toppling of Saddam Hussein, which removed the threat of attack from the east -- one of the key reasons some in Israel wanted to hold on to the West Bank.
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