Calling Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority a "rotten and dictatorial regime of terror," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that Israel would not enter any peace negotiations until it could sit down with a "different Authority."
"The Palestinian Authority must undergo basic structural reforms in all areas," Mr. Sharon said, demanding changes to the political, security, social, financial and legal structures. "Everything must be overhauled."
In a speech to the Israeli parliament, Mr. Sharon formally added the requirement of reform to his longstanding condition for talks of a complete halt to all Palestinian violence and incitement against Israel.
Palestinian officials rejected the new condition as a diversion and a stalling tactic.
Speaking two days after his party's leadership rejected the idea of a Palestinian state, Mr. Sharon did not refer explicitly to such a state today, as he has previously. But he made it clear that he still envisioned eventual negotiations over borders, after a long-term "interim agreement" and a lengthy period of peace between the antagonists.
Mr. Sharon has indicated privately that that period could be 10 years or longer. Palestinian leaders are demanding immediate negotiations toward statehood, arguing that the chief obstacle is not Palestinian violence but Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Mr. Sharon said that Israeli forces would continue to raid Palestinian-controlled territory as long as any threat remained of Palestinian attack. "We have not finished the work," he said, praising as successful Israel's wide-ranging West Bank offensive last month.
Early Tuesday, Israeli soldiers killed two members of the Palestinian security forces during a sweep through the town of Halhoul, near Hebron. Israel said that both were wanted men. Israeli forces also invaded at least two other West Bank villages, arresting at least 12 Palestinian men.
Many Palestinian leaders, political scientists and average citizens have complained for years about inept or corrupt management. With Mr. Arafat free of the Israeli siege of his Ramallah compound and able to travel again, some Palestinian analysts have argued that he should move quickly toward civic reform.
But Yossi Sarid, the opposition leader in the Israeli Parliament, cautioned after the prime minister spoke that by making such reform his own demand, rather than a Palestinian initiative, Mr. Sharon was guaranteeing that it would not take root.
In a poll published Tuesday, the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that an overwhelming majority of members of Mr. Sharon's party, the Likud, disagreed with the decision taken Sunday by the party's central committee to rule out the creation of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.
Mr. Sharon has said he supports the eventual creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state, but he argues that its precise borders should be negotiated only after years of calm.
He believes that, for its own security, Israel must retain control of Palestinian airspace, as well as strips of land in the West Bank and also, possibly, certain aquifers that supply Israelis with water. He also says Jerusalem must serve forever as Israel's capital, without being divided.
Officials of the Palestinian Authority demand that Israel fully withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, the lands it occupied in the 1967 war, and permit a Palestinian state there with its capital in Jerusalem.
Shimon Peres, Israel's foreign minister and a member of the left-leaning Labor Party, said that the central committee's action only enhanced the chances for Palestinian statehood.
"The whole world stood up for a Palestine state," he said. "So no matter what the Likud people wanted to achieve, they have achieved the opposite."
(China Daily May 15, 2002)
