Another Bush Failure: Sharon Abandons "Road Map"

[BurtWorm]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html


Sharon Doesn't Plan to Follow 'Road Map'
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: September 15, 2004


Filed at 4:50 p.m. ET

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel will not follow the ``road map,'' Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview published Wednesday, acknowledging he is casting aside the U.S.-backed peace plan for now, even as Washington insists it is still valid.

In violence Wednesday, 10 Palestinians were killed in two confrontations with Israeli troops, the highest single-day death toll in the West Bank since 2002. Among those killed were at least seven armed fugitives and an 11-year-old girl.

The fighting came at the start of the Jewish New Year, and Israeli troops enforced a tight holiday closure of the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians will be barred from Israel at least through the end of the month.

Sharon is pushing ahead with his plan of ``unilateral disengagement'' from the Palestinians -- a withdrawal from Gaza and four West Bank settlements in 2005.

[ClintonTyree]

1. Bush doesn't really care............................

what Sharon does. It's all a smoke screen, Bush wants to keep the Palestinians tamped down as far as they can just as much as Sharon. Neither of them gives a flying fuck about peace in the area, might makes right in their book.

[Kanary]

2. "Sharon hints that Arafat may be killed"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1304696,00.html

"Ariel Sharon has threatened that Yasser Arafat will meet the same fate as Hamas leaders who were assassinated earlier this year by the Israeli military.

In ambiguous comments to Israeli newspapers to mark the Jewish new year, the prime minister said he intends to force the Palestinian leader into exile. But he also hinted that Mr Arafat might be killed.

Speaking to Ma'ariv newspaper, Mr Sharon made direct reference to the Hamas spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by a missile in Gaza in March, and his successor as the Islamic resistance movement's leader, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, who was killed by the Israelis the following month.

"We operated against Ahmed Yassin and Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi when we thought the time was suitable. On the matter of Arafat we'll operate in the same way, when we find the convenient and suitable time. One needs to find the time and to do what has to be done," said Mr Sharon."

(snip)