Israel planning further withdrawal from West Bank settlements

JERUSALEM -- Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert plans to withdraw from more West Bank settlements immediately after forming Israel's next government and to set Israel's final borders within four years if it wins upcoming elections, a top political ally said Sunday in the most explicit statement yet of Olmert's plans.\nBorder-setting is the key agenda of the Israeli leader's Kadima Party, which holds a commanding lead ahead of the March 28 parliamentary vote.\nOlmert has said that should negotiation efforts fail, he would draw Israel's borders unilaterally, continuing a process started over the summer when the Israelis evacuated the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements.\nThe Hamas victory in Palestinian elections last month made that more likely, a senior Kadima member said, spelling out Kadima's withdrawal plans more clearly than past statements.\nAvi Dichter, a former security chief and a top Olmert ally, said Israel will dismantle more West Bank settlements -- but maintain a military presence in the evacuated areas.\n"It will be only a civilian disengagement, not a military disengagement," he told Israel Radio.\nDespite the absence of Ariel Sharon, who remains comatose after suffering a stroke earlier this year, the centrist party he founded, Kadima, is expected to win the elections and keep Olmert at the helm.\nAssuming that happens, work on the pullout will begin immediately \nafter a new government is installed, Dichter said. The entire process of setting final borders would take about four years, he said.\n"In the absence of a Palestinian partner, Israel will have to determine its final borders by itself, and that will involve the consolidation of smaller settlements into settlement blocs," he said.\nOlmert will seek crucial U.S. backing for the four-year plan, Dichter added.\nA senior official close to Olmert, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give details to the media, said such a disengagement was an option, but policy would be determined only after the election.\nPalestinians led by Hamas denounced the plan.\n"This is another indication of Israeli policy, which ignores the existence of the Palestinian people," said lawmaker Salah Bardawil, spokesman for Hamas' parliamentary faction.\n"Once again, Israel is threatening to adopt unilateral measures that vindicate Hamas' view that there is no partner in Israel who seeks real peace, and that Israel used negotiations in previous years as a pretext to ignore and stall the granting of Palestinian rights," Bardawil said.\nNearly two years ago, President Bush said a final peace deal would have to recognize "demographic realities" on the ground -- meaning Israel would not be expected to withdraw completely to the borders it held before capturing the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war because of large settlement blocs it built in the meantime.\nThe Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem as part of a future independent state.\nDichter did not specify which settlements might be evacuated in the first stage.\nBut the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, in an item citing Dichter, reported earlier Sunday that at least 17 settlements would be evacuated in the first stage -- including some that are most militantly committed to a Jewish presence in the West Bank. About 16,000 of Israel's 254,000 settlers live in these communities.\nJewish settler leaders have vowed to fight any evacuation plan. After a largely passive resistance in Gaza, settlers clashed fiercely with security forces who dismantled nine homes in an unauthorized West Bank settlement outpost in January. More than 200 people, most of them security forces, were wounded.\nBenny Katzover, head of the Elon Moreh settlement, one of the most extreme communities mentioned in the newspaper report, said further withdrawals would not be as peaceful as the Gaza pullout.\n"There is no reason why we shouldn't be beaten and suffer ... and stop this process with our bodies," Katzover told Israel's Army Radio.\nOlmert has said Israel would hold on to three major settlement blocs and the Jordan River Valley, but he has not said which of the more than 120 remaining West Bank settlements he would be ready to quit first.\nAll four, except the Ariel bloc, 10 miles inside the West Bank, are close to Israel's border. Yediot reported Israel also would hold onto three other smaller settlement areas, including the volatile settlement in the heart of Hebron and nearby Kiryat Arba.\nIn the Gaza evacuation, Israel pulled out both settlers and soldiers, then handed over the territory to the Palestinian Authority, which has failed to stop attacks from the coastal strip.\nThe Israelis maintained a military presence in the four emptied West Bank settlements and will do so in future evacuations, Dichter said.