Netanyahu Gets OK of Cabinet for Pullout Plan

The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday approved a proposal by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to carry out a promised troop withdrawal from the West Bank, but it put off decisions on the scope and timing of the pullout.

Initial Palestinian response was cool. Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, a Palestinian Authority Cabinet minister, termed the strings-attached and detail-free proposal a “public relations trick” aimed at deflecting U.S. pressure on Israel to move forward with the stalled peace process.

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator with Israel, said the Palestinians had yet to receive any proposal from Israel for a troop withdrawal. “The only negotiations taking place right now are inside Netanyahu’s own coalition,” he said.

U.S. officials also were cautious, with one senior diplomat saying he was not sure the Cabinet action amounted to a decision at all. “It’s clear they want to talk with us and with the Arab states [about further redeployments], but at some point, they have to make a presentation to the Palestinians,” he said.

Netanyahu’s aides, however, presented the vote--16 ministers approved the proposal and two abstained--as a victory for a coalition that lately has appeared on the verge of breaking apart.

“The first task was to get consensus on the principle of a withdrawal,” said David Bar-Illan, a Netanyahu spokesman. “Now we’ll have haggling and very tough bargaining over the percentages and exact location, but the main hurdle today was to get the principle agreed on.”

But it remains to be seen whether Netanyahu can command a majority once the details are presented. Right-wing legislators have threatened to bring down his government if Israel turns over any more land to the Palestinians.

Perhaps in a bid to mollify the right wing, the Cabinet also declared its intention to “strengthen” Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has suggested to Netanyahu that he take a “timeout” from settlement construction to help revive the moribund peace process, but Israeli Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh said the government has rejected the idea.

The ministers also made the pullout conditional on Palestinian fulfillment of commitments in existing peace deals, including cracking down on terrorism.

As part of a U.S.-mediated agreement on a pullout from the West Bank city of Hebron in January, Israel committed itself to carrying out three troop redeployments that were to begin in March and be completed by mid-1998.

For the first phase, the Cabinet approved a withdrawal from about 7% of jointly held West Bank land and from about 2% of land under Israeli control, but the Palestinians, who had hoped to receive about 30%, rejected the pullout as too small, and it never took place.

The Palestinians now have full or partial control over about 27% of the West Bank.

A statement issued by the Cabinet on Sunday indicated that Israel will now carry out just one redeployment, with the first and second phases collapsed into one and the third put off until talks are initiated with the Palestinians on a permanent peace settlement--and perhaps dropped altogether.

But the plan to delay or skip the third phase is likely to meet resistance from the United States. “We are committed to completion of the third redeployment,” the senior American diplomat said Sunday.

U.S. officials also reiterated the American position that Israel must withdraw in the current phase from an amount of land that is considered “reasonable and acceptable” by the Palestinians. “That’s got to be in the double digits for sure,” one said.

Netanyahu is expected to suggest a figure of 8% to 10%, Israeli officials said.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, speaking to reporters Sunday during a visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah, said he hopes the size of the withdrawal will be “according to what has been agreed upon and signed” in Israeli-Palestinian accords.

A committee of senior Israeli ministers, headed by Netanyahu and including Foreign Minister David Levy, Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordecai and Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon, will meet soon to come up with a detailed plan for the withdrawal and guidelines for entering negotiations for a final peace agreement, Naveh said.

Netanyahu has called for the two parties to move immediately to so-called final status talks, but the Palestinians have been skeptical, concerned that the move is a ploy aimed at bypassing Israel’s obligations under interim agreements.

Bar-Illan said two Israeli officials, Naveh and Uzi Arad, Netanyahu’s political advisor, will travel to Egypt today to try to garner support for the plan from President Hosni Mubarak. Other contacts are expected to be made with Jordan’s King Hussein and U.S. Middle East peace envoy Dennis B. Ross.