ISRAEL

Haaretz: Analysis / Could Sharon finally be serious?

The news of Sharon's interview to Haaretz about the planned evacuation of the Katif bloc settlements hit them as they came out of the office. It was immediately clear that the evacuation, even if no more than a declaration, would ignite any party meeting like a barrel of kerosene.

Perhaps Sharon should have waited with such a statement. But the convention is not the foremost thing on his mind right now. The difficult police questioning about his affairs, reportedly due on Thursday, is bothering him more. So is Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's impending decision concerning the affairs.

Yesterday Sharon managed to deflect public attention from the approaching questioning. Without committing to a schedule, without ordering the evacuation of a single settlement and without even evacuating the quasi-legal outpost Migron, Sharon is already talking of evacuating the Gaza Strip, whose settlements he until recently saw as a strategic asset.

So far, it's all talk.

Verbally, over the past three years, Sharon has established a Palestinian state, expelled Arafat and made numerous painful concessions.

Haaretz: Qureia: Gaza plan is 'good news'; Peres: Labor will back PM

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Tuesday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate settlements in the Gaza Strip was "good news."

Sparking a political storm Monday, Sharon told Haaretz that he has ordered plans drafted for the relocation of 17 settlements in the Strip and three in the northern West Bank, a move that he said could take one to two years.

Reuters: Sharon Drops Bombshell -
Gaza Settlements To Go

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday he planned to evacuate almost all of the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, dropping a political bombshell that stunned friends and foes alike.

"I have given the order to plan for the evacuation of 17 settlements in the Gaza Strip," the right-wing prime minister told the Haaretz newspaper. "I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza."

Sharon, once considered the godfather of the settlement movement, later spelled out his intentions in a closed-door meeting of his pro-settler Likud party, but gave no time frame.