Word: gaza
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...Arabs going to believe, the Bush administration or Ariel Sharon? According to President Bush, Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza while consolidating his grip on key West Bank settlements is a bold new start and an important step toward a two-state peace solution. Sharon, however, proclaims his plan a "heavy blow" to the Palestinians that forces them "to give up their aspirations for many years to come...
ISRAELI DIRECTION: Bruised battler Ariel Sharon tries to orchestrate a pullout from Gaza even as he faces a possible indictment over bribery...
...Sharon will probably face enormous pressure from the public and the media to resign. Yet the prospect of being forced from office seems only to have added to Sharon's desire to carry out his bold policy of "disengagement," which calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and perhaps much of the West Bank and the completion of a wall to seal off Israel from Palestinian-dominated territory. If implemented, the plan would result in the first evacuations of settlements by Israel since the signing of a peace deal with the Palestinians a decade...
...members last week by announcing that he will ask them to vote on his plan next month. He hopes to ratchet up pressure on right-wing members of the Knesset, who oppose any abandonment of settlements in the occupied territories, to go along with the plan to withdraw from Gaza, which enjoys the support of most grass-roots Likud members and a majority of Israeli voters. Sharon aims to bypass his political opponents by appealing to a broader constituency. "I advise you to take me seriously," he told an interviewer last week. "I have the power to do this...
What does Sharon hope to accomplish? At 76, he sees the withdrawal from Gaza as the centerpiece of his lifelong obsession with Israel's security. "We need to get out of Gaza, not to be responsible anymore for what happens there," he says. In his reading, there's no chance of a negotiated peace with the Palestinians so long as Arafat leads them. So, to stem the tide of blood in the meantime, Sharon is preparing to pull Israeli forces and settlers behind his West Bank security barrier and wait for the Palestinian political map to change. The trouble...