Compiled by Daily Star staff

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reported Friday that Israel has failed to comply with a General Assembly demand that it halt construction of a barrier cutting deep into Palestinian West Bank land.

Despite plans for a meeting in the near future between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and an unofficial new peace plan in Geneva scheduled Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has stubbornly defended the barrier as a necessary security measure.

The official finding at the UN lays the groundwork for the Palestinians to return to the 191-nation assembly to seek further action against Israel.
“I have concluded that Israel is not in compliance with the assembly’s demand that it ‘stop and reverse the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,’” said Annan’s report, requested by the assembly in an Oct. 21 resolution.

The report acknowledges Israel’s “right and duty to protect its people against terrorist attacks.” But it says that doing so by building what it calls a “security fence” that veers as much as 22 kilometers from the 1967 border between Israel and the West Bank would violate international law and increase suffering by the Palestinian people.

It also “could damage the longer-term prospects for peace by making the creation of an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state more difficult.”

Annan said building the wall at a time Israel and the Palestinians are being asked to follow the “road map” peace plan could be seen only as “a deeply counterproductive act.”

The report said the barrier would cut off 16.6 percent of West Bank land, home to 17,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and 220,000 in East Jerusalem.

“If the full route is completed, another 160,000 Palestinians will live in enclaves, areas where the barrier almost completely encircles communities and tracts of land,” it added.

The General Assembly voted 144 to 4 with 12 abstentions last month to adopt a resolution demanding that Israel halt construction of the barrier. Only the United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia voted “no.”

Palestinian UN envoy Nasser al-Kidwa said if Israel failed to comply, he would ask the assembly to adopt a second resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on whether the barrier was illegal.

US diplomats and some EU states have opposed such a move, arguing that bringing the UN court into the dispute could prejudge issues better left to later negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel and the Palestinians were stepping up contacts Friday after Sharon admitted Thursday some withdrawals from occupied land were inevitable but also warned of unilateral measures.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei’s bureau chief Hassan Abu Libdeh was due to meet with Sharon’s own top adviser Dov Weisglass next week, to pave the way for a first meeting between the two premiers.

The principle of that meeting appeared to have been secured two weeks ago, following the swearing in of Qorei’s new Cabinet, but Sharon’s tough line in a speech to the press Thursday cast some doubt over the summit.

Despite rare financial sanctions by Washington over the barrier and Israel’s settlement activity in the Palestinian territories, a defiant Sharon argued Thursday that the fence was vital to Israel’s security.

The Maariv daily quoted political sources Friday as saying Sharon was planning to dismantle isolated Gaza settlements in exchange for the annexation of large Jewish blocs in the West Bank, should the internationally backed road map peace plan remain stalled.

“Sharon is considering a unilateral measure of evacuating settlements from the Gaza Strip in conjunction with applying Israeli law to one or more settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), if negotiations with the Palestinians over the road map fail,” the newspaper said.

The government coalition is split over the issue, with the powerful center-right Shinui hinting it could pull out if Sharon clings on to isolated settlements while the ultra-nationalist fringe threatens the same response should the premier shut down a single settlement.

An Israeli minister demanded the dismantling of “many” Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory to boost the ailing Middle East peace process, in a German newspaper interview released Friday.

“We have to ensure progress and that will come by curtailing the settlements, a change in the security zone and abolishment of the road barricades,” Joseph Paritzky, the Israeli infrastructure minister, told the German edition of the Financial Times.

“If the (peace process) is to go further, we have to eliminate many, many of the settlements. We must do the right thing and this is the right thing,” he said.

Paritzky, from the Shinui party, said that “if Sharon doesn’t do this, we will possibly not continue the coalition and he knows that.”

The publicity surrounding an unofficial peace plan due to be signed in Geneva on Monday has forced Sharon to show he is undertaking his own efforts for a resumption of peace talks.

Israeli opposition politicians and prominent Palestinians will on Monday introduce the private peace plan known as the “Geneva Initiative,” despite outright opposition from the Israeli government.

“For the first time there is a detailed plan showing what could be the outcome of negotiations,” Anis al-Qaq, the Palestinian leadership’s representative in Switzerland said Friday, although he reiterated that the initiative did not carry official endorsement.

The chief driving force on the Israeli side is former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, while the main Palestinian instigator is former Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.

Several hundred politicians, businesspeople and celebrities from both sides are due to join them in Geneva for the event, along with former US President Jimmy Carter.

“For once in more than three years there is a new option that has been put on the table,” Ghaith al-Omari, one Palestinian participant in the event, said.

Smoldering violence in the Occupied Territories has claimed six Palestinian lives in the last 48 hours. The latest victim was a member of the Palestinian security services.

Sayad Abu Safra, 35, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday as he tried to prevent a mentally deranged person from approaching a Jewish settlement, Palestinian medical sources said. ­ Agencies