Addressing the inaugural session of his cabinet Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set out five principles to govern policy moves with the Palestinians, reported Haaretz newspaper, quoting Israel Radio.
The government also approved nominations to the 13-member security cabinet, which will include Sharon, Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Finance Minister Silvan Shalom, Public Safety Minister Uzi Landau and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
The radio listed the policy principles as:
1. Granting security and a sense of security to Israelis.
2. Halting Palestinian violence and preventing
achievements gained through violence while forestalling escalation.
3. Reducing the danger of internationalizing the conflict with the Palestinians.
4. Reducing the possibility of regional deterioration.
5. Safeguarding all possibilities for resuming peace talks with the Palestinians, but only after cessation of the violence.
Meanwhile, clashes erupted between Israeli troops and Palestinians as they sought to reopen a West Bank road Monday in a mass protest at the tightening of a closure around the city of Ramallah, said AFP.
"This is (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's war against the Palestinian people," charged Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, who joined around 1,000 demonstrators as they marched from the outskirts of Ramallah to Bir Zeit along a road that had been dug up by the Israeli army last week.
"It is a racist war by the occupation but we will fight against it because we have nothing to lose and our freedom to gain," he said.
In action approved by Israel's new Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the army on Sunday strengthened its siege on Ramallah, sending in tanks and adding checkpoints and roadblocks to the trenches it built last week, isolating the city and dozens of surrounding villages.
AFP said that the army fired rubber bullets and tear gas on stone-throwing youths near the village of Surda as Palestinians used bulldozers and their bare hands to fill in trenches on the Bir Zeit-Ramallah road.
Witnesses told the agency that at least two people were injured by rubber bullets and dozens were overcome by tear gas.
Around five or six cars were able to use the road before Israeli army bulldozers and jeeps moved in to try to enforce the blockade, witnesses said. A group of students from Bir Zeit university sat in front of one bulldozer as it moved on to the road before being hauled away by Israeli soldiers, the agency added.
"Closure is apartheid," read one placard carried by demonstrators, while others proclaimed "Intifada going on despite the siege," "Get out of our land," and "I must visit my mother, open the road."
Israel’s Labor ministers, said Haaretz, went on the offensive over the blockade.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was quoted as telling Israel Radio that the siege policy "requires review and will be reviewed."
But Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh and several senior army officers took a tougher stand and voiced doubts over the wisdom of the tightened blockade around the West Bank city, said the daily.
Sneh told the paper that the siege "could do Israel more harm than good."
"The disadvantage is that it causes serious embitterment among the general public, the sense that they have nothing left to lose, and it also causes the state of Israel severe damage internationally."
Cabinet minister Matan Vilnai, a former senior army officer, said that through "the injury to innocent populations, we are pushing more and more Palestinians to the path of terror."
Sources told the paper that the decision to tighten the blockade was made by Sharon in consultation with Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and that Peres was not notified ahead of its implementation.
Sharon's office said the closure around Ramallah was tightened to foil a planned "terrorist attack" from the area, said Haaretz.
"The IDF tightened its closure over Ramallah in the wake of specific information on a terrorist attack that was planned (to originate from) within the area of the city," the prime minister's office said in a statement.
"The Prime Minister's policy is to ease (restrictions) wherever possible, at the same time taking action in areas in which terrorist activity is taking place," the statement said.
Israel Radio quoted an unnamed senior security official as disclosing that a number of those suspected of involvement in the planned attack were arrested in an operation the official said was made possible by the closure clamped on the city.
The measures, which representing a tightening of a five-and-a-half-month closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, were denounced as a "new war" by the Palestinians who accused Israel of turning their cities into prisons and called for urgent UN intervention, said AFP.
"The new plan which aims at implementing a collective siege and causing a paralysis in Palestinian life is an escalation of war against the Palestinian people," the Palestinian leadership said in a statement - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
