Publicité
Sharon heckled by American Jews opposed to Gaza pullout
Par
Partager cet article
Sharon heckled by American Jews opposed to Gaza pullout
Shouting “Jews don’t deport Jews,” hecklers disrupted a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to American Jewish leaders on Sunday in which he promoted his Gaza pullout plan as vital to Israel’s security. “Usually I handle these things by myself,” Sharon quipped as security men removed a heckler who shouted anti-pullout slogans and ripped open a jacket to display an orange shirt, the color settlers have adopted in their campaign against evacuation.
“This plan will improve our security and offer a chance to start a political process with the Palestinians,” Sharon told the overwhelmingly supportive crowd. “It will guarantee a Jewish majority in the state of Israel.” Sharon arrived in New York earlier in the day to attend a “We stand with Israel” rally organized by major Jewish groups to shore him up ahead of the August withdrawal. He speaks today in Washington to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group. But he is not due to meet U.S. government leaders during the visit, which is described as a private trip. On the flight to New York, Sharon reaffirmed his bedrock demand that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, due to meet President George W. Bush at the White House on Thursday, rein in militants before peacemaking can resume. Sharon also said the withdrawal would go ahead in mid-August despite reports that senior officers were urging a six-month delay over security concerns and the slow pace of preparations for taking care of evacuated settlers.
“This report has no basis. The disengagement is to be carried out on the exact date that has been set,” Sharon said on the flight. “I think it will begin on the 16th or the 17th of August.” Sharon’s speech at Baruch College in Manhattan was disrupted three times by hecklers and several hundred people outside protested against the withdrawal.
A truce after four years of violence</B>
But most of the audience rose in a standing ovation for Sharon, who called his plan for the first evacuation of settlers from land Palestinians want for a state “the most difficult decision” he has ever made. “I said in the past — and I say it also today: I am willing to make painful compromises for a genuine and durable peace,” Sharon said. But he vowed to make “no compromise on terror.” Sharon has said that talks on Palestinian statehood cannot resume until Abbas disarms militant groups, as a US-backed peace “road map” stipulates.
“Without quiet, it will be impossible to move forward in the peace process,” he said en route to New York. He was referring to anti-Israeli violence that has flared over the past few days in the Gaza Strip. Abbas, who with Sharon declared a truce in February after more than four years of violence, said he intends to press Bush to spell out his expectations for peacemaking following the Gaza pullout.
Bush hosted Sharon at his Crawford, Texas, ranch last month in a further show of US support for the evacuation of all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four of 120 in the West Bank. Most Israelis favor the pullout, while settlers and their supporters see it as a reward for Palestinian militant groups that have killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings since 2000.
<B>Jeffrey HELLER</B>
 |
<B>Protesters interrupt Laura Bush’s Jerusalem shrine visit</B>
Protesters jostled and harangued US first lady Laura Bush on Sunday when she visited a Jerusalem shrine at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.“How dare you come in here! Why your husband kill Muslims?” one protester shouted at the first lady as Israeli police and US Secret Service agents formed a tight cordon around her to keep people back. For Bush, on a Middle East goodwill tour, it was a rare close encounter with hostile demonstrators.
A small crowd of people pressed in on Bush as she entered the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem’s walled Old City. One worshipper cried out as she entered: “None of you belong in here.” Bush, who made an appeal for peace later, did not respond to him or to an old woman inside the mosque who shouted “Koran, Koran” at her in Arabic. Bush, dressed in a black pantsuit, with black headscarf donned in religious respect and held tightly on her head, exited with police linking arms around her.She began a Middle East trip Friday acknowledging that the US image in the Muslim world had been badly damaged by a prisoner abuse scandal and a magazine report, since retracted, that US interrogators desecrated the Koran.
Publicité
Publicité
Les plus récents
