Israel is considering annexing land within the Palestinian territories in the absence of progress in the peace process, Deputy Defence Minister, Ephraim Sneh, said Thursday.
"We wanted to create the conditions for coexistence by mutual agreement, but without agreement we are ready to do it unilaterally," Sneh told public radio, adding that he had been given cabinet responsibility for examining the possibility.
"We will be guided in this case by principle, to have minimum rule over the Palestinians, and to have a maximum of security," said Sneh, a cabinet ally of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
The plan "concerns also the separation of the two peoples, in as much as this is feasible given the question of security," he added.
In recent days, bloody clashes have pitted Jewish settlers and Palestinians against each other in an escalation of the deadly violence that has rocked the Palestinian territories over the past two weeks, killing more than 100.
Sneh indicated that the plan would include the de facto annexing of blocs of Jewish settlements that Israel wants to keep and the evacuation of the more isolated settlements, which Israel was willing to give up in negotiations.
"It is not a question of annexing territory but of establishing borders between the settlements and the Palestinians," Sneh said.
"But there is no question of operating such a separation in Jerusalem," Sneh emphasized, implying that Israel would keep control of all of east Jerusalem which it occupied and annexed 33 years ago.
In July's failed Camp David summit, the prime minister had been ready to accept limited Palestinian autonomy in Arab east Jerusalem.
Some 200,000 Jewish settlers live in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and their fate has been one of the most contentious issues standing in the way of an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord - JERUSALEM (AFP)
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