AP News, May 12th, 2007
Israel's foreign minister pledged further withdrawals from the West Bank to facilitate creation of a Palestinian state but said in an interview published Saturday that the process was being hindered by Palestinian inability to rein in militants.
Tzipi Livni, who has said she will challenge Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for leadership of their Kadima party, told Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram that Israel's 2005 pullback from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements will not be the last withdrawals from Palestinian areas.
"I can assure you that Gaza is not the last step. We are convinced that to establish a Palestinian state, we have to withdraw from other areas," she said. "We do not want to control the Palestinians."
She did not detail the extent or timing of another round of pullbacks.
Violence between rival Palestinian groups and bloody family feuds have spiraled lately. And Palestinians have repeatedly fired rockets from Gaza at Israel in recent weeks, breaching a cease-fire in place along the Gaza-Israel border since November.
The Arabic-language newspaper quoted Livni saying that said that while pragmatists among the Palestinian leadership believed that peace with Israel would be best served by quelling violence, they had not been able to take control militants.
"The road to the Palestinian state starts by abandoning terror," she said.
The rocket attacks that breached the cease-fire prompted speculation about a possible large-scale Israeli incursion into the strip. But Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Saturday that an Israeli ground operation in Gaza should only be a last resort.
"I think that going into Gaza is an option that should be kept for a situation where there is absolutely no other alternative," he told a public meeting in the Israeli town of Holon.
The latest comments from Livni and Peretz came a day before Jordanian King Abdullah was due to visit the West Bank town of Ramallah for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It is the king's first visit in seven years.
