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Limited pullback to be completed by 2005.

By: Joshua Brilliant, UPI writer| created at 06:40GMT, 16 april 2004|.

The Israeli pullback from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank should be completed by the end of 2005, according to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan.

Sharon's office Thursday faxed copies of the plan to his ministers, and the Haaretz newspaper published its text.

The idea is that Israel withdraws from the entire Gaza Strip, but at least initially hold a narrow zone that serves as a wedge between the Palestinian area and Egypt. It would get out of there, too, once it is satisfied Egypt would effectively control the border area.

The pullback from the northern West Bank would see Israel out of four settlements. Those are isolated sites, very dangerous to live in, and the evacuation would allow Palestinians control over a large contiguous territory.

The document states, "Israel will evacuate the Gaza Strip, including all the Israeli settlements currently existing there, and will redeploy outside the territory of the Strip."

"As a result, there will be no basis for the claim that the Gaza Strip is occupied territory," the document adds.

While it will not be inside the strip, it will be at its southern tip and in control all around it. It will "supervise and guard the external envelope on land, will maintain exclusive control in the air space of Gaza, and continue to conduct military activities in the sea space of the Gaza Strip," the plan says.

Initially, "Israel will continue to maintain a military presence along the border line between the Gaza Strip and Egypt," an area the army's code map calls the Philadelphi Route.

"This presence is an essential security need, and in certain places, it is possible that there will be a need for the physical enlargement of the area in which the military activity will be carried out.

"Later on, the possibility of evacuating this area will be considered. The evacuation of this area will be contingent on, among other things, the security reality and the extent of Egypt's cooperation in the creation of a more reliable arrangement," the document says.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was in Cairo several weeks ago to discuss the matter with President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak sought Israeli consent to amend the two countries peace treaty and allow Egypt to send more, and better trained, troops to the area. Israel reportedly rejected that request.

The document says that, "If and when conditions emerge for the evacuation of this (border) area, Israel will be prepared to examine the possibility of establishing a sea port and an airport in the Gaza Strip." The arrangements would have to be "determined with Israel."

The restrictions are designed to keep the strip "demilitarized and devoid of armaments," the document says. It alludes to Israeli-Palestinian agreements that limit the forces and weapons the Palestinian Authority may have there.

Those accords also give Israel the right of hot pursuit into the autonomous Palestinian areas. The document says "Israel reserves ... the basic right of self-defense, including taking preventative steps as well as responding by using force against threats that will emerge from the Gaza Strip."

A similar demand concerns the areas it would evacuate in the West Bank.

The evacuation from the northern West Bank would see Israel out of the settlements of Ganim and Kadim east of Jenin, and Homesh and Sa-Nur beside the Jenin-Nablus road. Israel would also evacuate all the permanent military installations it has there. (Some installations were already removed. The paratroopers' basic training camp has moved to Israel proper and another base, for the Golani infantry brigade, is under construction inside Israel proper. Both have been built with U.S. money.)

"Upon completion of the move, no permanent presence of Israeli military forces and Israeli civilians in the area of northern Samaria will remain," the paper says.

The move will give the Palestinians "territorial contiguity in the area of northern Samaria," it adds. Samaria is the biblical name for the northern half of the West Bank.

Israel offered to "consider reducing its activity in Palestinian cities" and reduce the number of checkpoints in the West Bank. Those roadblocks have been a source of friction with Palestinians and army officers have said there is less need for them as Israel builds its security barrier.

The Palestinian security apparatus, especially in the West Bank, has collapsed under the Israeli pressure and Sharon's plan says Israel agrees that, "in coordination with it, advice, aid and instruction will be given to Palestinian security forces for the purpose of fighting terror and maintaining public order by American, British, Egyptian, Jordanian or other experts."

Egypt has offered to send intelligence advisers.

The paper says, "Israel insists that there will be no foreign security presence in the Gaza Strip and/or Judea and Samaria" that is not coordinated with it.

It has invested heavily in the settlements it would leave and the document discusses what would happen to them. In 1982, when Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, it pulled out walls of some houses and destroyed others. Later Sharon, who was defense minister, was widely criticized for having done so.

His current plan says "Israel will aspire to leave standing the real estate assets of the Israeli settlements," providing an international body accepts proprietorship.

The document does not say how the government would handle the 7,000 settles who would be evacuated. The National Security Council Tuesday sent ministers its proposals to let the settlers choose between monetary compensation, alternative flats, and agricultural areas. The evacuees could resettle wherever they want, but Israel would like them to move to an area opposite the southern Gaza Strip, along the Egyptian border, the Negev, the Galilee, or the seam line with the West Bank, Yediot Aharonot reported.

Sharon's plan says that water, electricity, sewage and communications infrastructures that serve the Palestinians will be left in place. As a rule, "Israel will enable the continued supply of electricity, water, gas and fuel to the Palestinians."

"In general, the economic arrangements that are currently in effect between Israel and the Palestinians will remain valid," the document continues.

Palestinian workers would be allowed across, "in accordance with existing criteria." The same will apply to the movement of goods.

More than 4,000 Palestinians work in a joint industrial zone at Erez, in the northern tip of the Gaza Strip. Many plants there are Israeli-owned.

The document says Israel will consider retaining the zone's current format providing "appropriate security arrangements are made" and the international community explicitly agrees that this "will not be perceived as a continuation of Israeli control in the area."

If these conditions are not met, "the industrial zone will be transferred to the responsibility of an agreed-upon Palestinian or international element," the document says.

In order to control movement from Egypt to the Gaza Strip and from Jordan to the West Bank, "existing arrangements (at the border) will remain in force." It means travelers will be subject to Israeli scrutiny. That could be done discreetly.

Israel would like to move the crossing point from Gaza to Egypt to the "border triangle," about two kilometers south of its current location. That would allow an increase in the hours the terminal operates but the Egyptians have to agree to it. The present site has been considered dangerous ever since workers were shot on the road leading to it, early on in the intifada.

The Erez crossing, in the northern Gaza Strip, will be moved into Israel proper, the document adds.

Sharon's Likud Party members will decide on May 2 whether their ministers and Knesset members vote for, or against, the plan. The matter will then come for a vote in the cabinet and legislature.

Source: www.upi.com   - .