Israeli troops will withdraw Sunday evening from Qalqilya, one of the five Palestinian towns in the West Bank they have partly reoccupied since the assassination of a cabinet minister on October 17, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said, reported AFP.
An Israeli press report said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to put off his schedule visit to Washington “to oversee the IDF withdrawal from Palestinian-controlled areas,” which the army entered after the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi in mid-October. During the incursions, dozens of Palestinians were killed or arrested by the occupation army.
Ben Eliezer was quoted by military radio as telling a weekly cabinet meeting that he was also in favor of withdrawing from the four other self-rule cities, Nablus, Ramallah, Tulkarem and Jenin, but did not fix a date.
Ben Eliezer stressed that the intervention in the Qalqilya area would be terminated "because the operation started the day after the murder of an Israeli minister by a radical Palestinian group has proved effective."
He added on public radio that it was time for a "gradual pull-out" to take place.
Earlier in the day, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the Israeli army could withdraw "town-by-town" from the reoccupied Palestinian West Bank areas if calm prevails and extremists are jailed, said AFP.
"We are ready for a town-by-town withdrawal within a week if the Palestinian Authority arrests the provocateurs and the main terrorists who run free in these towns, and takes on responsibility for maintaining the peace," he said on public radio.
Sharon, who made the comments in an interview in Newsweek, explained that he had put off his scheduled visit to the United States to oversee the Israeli army’s withdrawal from the Palestinian-controlled areas.
"We are in a war here, a special kind of war," Sharon told Newsweek, cited by the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz.
"I have decided to continue with the redeployment of our forces. What might result is a situation in which terror bursts out."
Sharon canceled his planned visit to the US and the United Kingdom, citing the security situation as the reason for his decision not to travel abroad.
According to the Prime Minister's bureau, the visit to the US will be rescheduled in the near future.
Sharon, who referred to the Oslo agreements as "one of Israel's most tragic mistakes," said that, at present, Israel does not have a peace partner in Arafat. He added, however, that if the Palestinian leader "stops terror, we'll negotiate with him. [The peace plan] offered him at Camp David has never been offered before by any prime minister and will never be offered again by any prime minister - including myself."
Sharon is expected to meet with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres on Sunday to discuss Peres' meetings with Arafat at an international economic summit in Majorca, Spain over the weekend. Peres will also update Sharon on his meeting in Spain with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said the paper – Albawaba.com
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