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Newsletter : 1fax0212.txt
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>Israel Faxx
>JN Feb. 12, 2001, Vol. 9, No. 25
Gaza Airport Reopens (for Haj?)
By Arutz-7 News
Despite continuing warfare in Gaza, Prime Minister Ehud Barak approved the opening of the Dahaniye airport for Palestinian traffic - to enable Muslims to make a religious pilgrimage to Mecca. The PA requested that the airport be opened in order to enable 9,000 Gazans to fly to Mecca; Muslims from the West Bank will travel via Jordan.
Israel Declares Peace Proposals Void
By VOA News
Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak's cabinet has officially declared that peace proposals made during recent talks with Palestinians are no longer valid. A unanimous Sunday vote said plans put forward by Barak are obsolete and not binding on the next government.
Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon has said he would not be bound by decisions reached in earlier discussions with the Palestinians. In Jerusalem, Sharon voiced optimism about forming a national unity government after his second meeting in two days with met with Barak. Elder statesman Shimon Peres, who has been kept abreast of the deliberations, also sounded optimistic, saying chances of forming a Labor-Likud coalition are fair.
Peres, a member of the Labor party along with Barak, said in a television interview that Sharon has told the Labor party it could choose two of the three most important cabinet positions if it agrees to join in a coalition government. Those positions are foreign affairs, defense, and treasury.
Meanwhile, violence between Israel and the Palestinians continued. The French news agency AFP said three Palestinians were shot and wounded in clashes with Israel soldiers Sunday. Two were wounded when Israeli troops fired on stone-throwers near the Karni crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, and another in a similar clash in the village of Al-Khader, near Bethlehem.
Clashes were also reported in the West Bank town of Hebron. And, for the first time in a month, Palestinian gunmen opened fired at the Jewish settlement of Gilo on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem. Israeli sources said the shots were fired from the Palestinian-ruled town of Beit Jala near Bethlehem. There were no reports of casualties or damage.
The Broad Impact of Arafat's Planned Move to Baghdad
Exclusive from DEBKAFile to Gamla News Service
Since Likud leader Ariel Sharon's election victory, Yasir Arafat has taken tangible steps to prepare the ground for the liquidation of the Palestinian Authority established under the 1993 Oslo accords with Israel and the transfer of himself and close clique to Baghdad.
He will leave behind him a newly created "Independent Palestinian authority" that he will rule from the Iraqi capital as PLO chief. In this capacity he will revoke all the American-brokered accords he signed with Israel and accept only the UN's 1947 Resolution 181 partitioning Palestine, as the sole basis for talks on a settlement. The Palestinian leader directed his minions to speed up the preparations for moving to Baghdad.
According to DEBKAfile's Palestinian sources, the notion of an independent Palestinian authority seated in Gaza, as outlined in Amman by the chairman of the Palestinian Council, Salim Zaanun, was not conceived as a challenge to Arafat's authority, but is Arafat's brainchild.
A document for its establishment came out of a series of meetings Arafat and Zaanun held with Palestinian foreign minister Farouk Kaddumi, who refuses to set foot in PA territory in protest against the peace process with Israel.
Publication of the document is a step towards dissolving Palestinian Authority institutions and setting up an "independent authority" in its stead. That body would come under the aegis of PLO-Baghdad (on the model of PLO-Tunis before 1993), freeing Arafat to turn the clock back and revoke all Palestinian commitments signed with Israel and the US, including the 1993 Oslo peace framework (for which Arafat with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres received Nobel peace prizes).
However, Arafat's plans have run into a snag:. Kaddumi has planted a clause in the independent authority's charter, providing for it to be headed not by a figurehead as Arafat had intended, but by an officer with executive powers, a sort of provincial Palestinian prime minister who will govern Gaza and the West Bank in practice. Arafat views this provision as a challenge to his authority. He fears that if the "independent authority" turns out to be genuinely independent, he might find himself stranded powerless in Baghdad.
On Saturday, the Bush administration laid down three new guidelines for its Middle East policy, all powerful props for the future Sharon government.
- The Bush administration would adopt a broad regional approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This was stated by the State Department spokesman when releasing the itinerary for "the general's" forthcoming Middle East trip.
Colin Powell begins his first overseas tour as secretary on Feb. 23 and will visit in addition to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank.
-
Responsibility for future talks will lie with the Israelis and
Palestinians themselves.
-
Powell did not leave this one to his spokesman but stepped
forward himself for emphasis: Top priority would be assigned to
enforcing the United Nations' efforts "to deny Iraq the opportunity
to purchase weapons or material" for weapons of mass destruction
and "keep the missiles under control."
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