As Israel continues to dispossess and kill Palestinians, Egypt steps in to warn of the dangers of unilateralism, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman arrived in Ramallah Wednesday for talks with Palestinian Authority (PA) officials, including Chairman Yasser Arafat. Palestinians sources said Suleiman would press the PA "to facilitate and not impede" Israel's purported plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. He was also expected to press the PA leadership "to put its house in order" particularly in the Gaza Strip where Palestinian resistance militias are in virtual control. Suleiman on Monday held a secret meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the latter's ranch in the Negev. According to Israeli sources, Suleiman urged the Israeli leader to see to it that the purported upcoming withdrawal from Gaza be part of the implementation of the American-backed roadmap for peace in the Middle East. Moreover, the Egyptian envoy reportedly stressed that any Israeli steps in Gaza ought to be fully coordinated with the PA in order to prevent the occurrence of a "security vacuum" in the Strip. Israel has been asking Egypt to play a "certain security role" in facilitating the Israeli withdrawal and maintaining security after a possible Israeli withdrawal. Egypt reportedly has neither completely refused nor enthusiastically accepted the Israeli request, arguing that any possible efforts to that effect would have to be coordinated with the Palestinians. Meanwhile, a meeting between Sharon and PA Premier Ahmed Qurei is slated to take place Tuesday 16 March, Palestinian and Israeli sources reported Wednesday. It is not clear though if the planned meeting -- presuming it will take place -- will reflect a certain "narrowing of differences" or rather the result of international pressure on both sides. Qurei had been saying that he wouldn't hold a meeting with Sharon "just for the sake of it", stressing that "proper preparations" ought to precede any meeting in order to make it successful. Qurei has once again warned that the continued building of the wall and the huge land grab Israel is now carrying out is effectively killing the "two-state solution". Speaking in Norway during a one-day visit Tuesday, the Palestinian premier said Palestinians would start demanding one unitary state in all of mandatory of Palestine if it became clear that a viable Palestinian state was unrealistic or impossible. "If the Israelis will continue building the wall and plundering Palestinian land, they will certainly kill the two-state solution." He added: "We are still committed to the two-state solution but if they will kill this, then we will have to look to other choices. Maybe the choice about one state will be the solution," he said. In another development, Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said on Tuesday his resistance group would halt attacks on Israel "for an extended period of time" if Israel carried through "a full and genuine withdrawal from the Gaza Strip". Speaking to reporters in Gaza, Yassin added, however, that Hamas would wait to see if the withdrawal was going to be followed by a similar withdrawal in the West Bank. He said the struggle "will continue if we see that Israel is consolidating its occupation of the West Bank ... because this conflict is not only about Gaza, but about the West Bank, Jerusalem and the refugees as well." Earlier, Yassin said Hamas was proposing a "covenant of honour" for the administration of Gaza after a possible Israeli withdrawal. He strongly denied reports originating in Israel that Hamas would seek to take over Gaza after the withdrawal, saying, "security control has never been our goal". He said Hamas would cooperate and coordinate with all Islamic and nationalist forces as well as the PA in order to serve the interests of the Palestinian people. Meantime, the Israeli occupation army continued to carry out daily murderous incursions into Palestinian towns and villages throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The latest took place on Tuesday when Israeli troops backed by tanks and attack helicopters raided the northern West Bank town of Jenin. Rampaging troops murdered a 23-year-old mother of three children identified as Dalal Al-Sabbagh who reportedly was shot by a sniper as she sought to take way her children from a window they were gathered at, watching Israeli soldiers further down the street. The Israeli army gave no explanation as to why the woman, who was inside her home, was shot and killed. The killing and maiming of Palestinian civilians has become a daily routine in the occupied territories. This past week, the Israeli army killed as many as 28 Palestinians and injured as many as a hundred in a series of unprovoked attacks and raids on Palestinian population centres. The murderous killings, ostensibly meant to mollify the right-leaning Israeli public by inflicting "as much death" as possible on the Palestinian society prior to any prospective Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, has been accompanied by another frantic onslaught of land grab throughout the West Bank, particularly around Jerusalem. On Tuesday, the Israeli occupation army announced that it was confiscating more than 11,000 dunums of mainly agricultural land around the village of Beit Hanina north of Jerusalem. Around 128 Palestinian homes in the village have received confiscation orders. Needless to say, the land grab, along with the continued building of the wall, is reinforcing Palestinian suspicions that the purported Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is only intended to consolidate the Israeli occupation and colonisation of the West Bank. Indeed, the "facts on the ground" leave no doubt that this is precisely the case.
