Israel may quit other settlements, Sharon says

JERUSALEM - Israeli leader Ariel Sharon suggested in an interview published Friday that West Bank settlements — beyond the four to be dismantled in coming weeks along with those in the Gaza Strip — could be relinquished as part of a peace deal.

But he reiterated that Israel would keep major settlement blocs in any peace deal.

The Israeli Defense Ministry, meanwhile, wants to complete the withdrawal from Gaza and the northern West Bank already by Sept. 4, rather than in mid-September, the original target date, security officials said. The forcible removal of settlers from their homes there is to begin next week.

The deadline was moved up even as military sources raised to 3,000 the number of people they estimate have entered Gaza settlements to bolster resistance.

“The settlement blocs will remain” in Israeli hands, Sharon told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, reiterating his oft-stated policy. “I never replied when asked what the boundaries of the settlements blocs are — and not because I’m not familiar with the map.”

Asked whether Israel would eventually pull out of several small West Bank settlements, he replied: “Not everything will be there. The issue will be raised during the final status talks with the Palestinians.”

When Sharon decided more than a year ago to quit Gaza, captured 38 years ago, he reasoned that would make it easier for Israel to hold on to the major West Bank settlement blocs, where most of the 240,000 settlers live.

The boundaries of those blocs are in dispute, with an especially controversial plan being Israel’s program to build 3,650 housing units in an unsettled area of West Bank land outside Jerusalem.

Israel’s determination to hold on to and expand these blocs could cloud hopes that the impending withdrawal from Gaza would restart stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

'No regrets'
“I have no regrets,” Sharon also told the paper. “Even if I had known ahead of time the extent of resistance, I would have done it anyway.”

His published remarks followed a mass rally on Thursday by 150,000 rightists in central Tel Aviv, the largest demonstration by Israelis seeking to block the withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip set to begin on Wednesday.

The Defense Ministry has modified its target date for completing the Gaza evacuation, which is to begin Wednesday, because 55,000 soldiers and police will be involved in the forcible removal of resisters — about 10,000 more than originally planned, security officials said.

In all, 9,000 settlers are to be uprooted.

President Bush endorsed the withdrawal in an interview broadcast Thursday on Israel TV. “The disengagement is, I think, a part of making Israel more secure and peaceful,” he said.

Within Gaza, there were conflicting signs of the impending evacuation deadline. At the largest Gaza settlement, Neve Dekalim, supermarket shelves were half-empty, with basic supplies such as oil, flour and eggs all but cleaned out. A nearby clothing store was advertising a huge sale.

But a fully stocked toy and stationery store was charging full prices.

Resistance rhetoric sounded equally ambivalent.

Libby Weinberger, 63, a former New Yorker, denied this would be the settlers’ last Sabbath in Gaza.

“Nothing in life is certain,” said Weinberger, who came to the Neve Dekalim settlement from her home in the Israeli town of Raanana to lend her settler daughter moral support.

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