MIDDLE EAST: Tens of thousands of Israeli settlers and their supporters demonstrated in central Tel Aviv last night against Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's declared determination to dismantle some settlements and withdraw unilaterally from parts of the West Bank to new "security" lines.
The demonstration coincided ironically with Palestinian complaints that Mr Sharon has no intention of dismantling settlements, and that he is trying to impose unacceptable limitations on future Palestinian statehood by means of the controversial security barrier Israel is building inside the West Bank. Mr Sharon reiterated last night that he would begin to disengage from the Palestinians in the next few months if the Palestinian Authority does not dismantle Hamas and other extremist groups, and that while he understood "the pain" of those settlers who would be moved, this would not deter him.
The Israeli government insists that the barrier is being erected to prevent suicide bombers. Israeli officials say that a Palestinian man who blew himself up in a so-called "work accident" near Nablus in the West Bank yesterday morning was en route to central Israel, and was only the latest in the relentless wave of such bombers and would-be bombers.
However the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Korei, denounced the barrier yesterday as "a racist separation wall that intends to turn the areas of the West Bank into isolated cantons," and appealed to the international community to thwart further construction. Because the barrier cuts deep into the West Bank in places, it was rendering the Palestinian desire for independent statehood "a waste of time," he said, and would leave the Palestinians no choice but to demand a single binational state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea - a scenario thoroughly opposed by Israel since Jews would be a minority in such a single state. Mr Korei has made clear that his talk of a binational state is a personal viewpoint only, however. And spokespeople for the PA President Yasser Arafat say he is committed to a two-state solution, reserving the right unilaterally to declare statehood in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Many Israeli politicians and analysts doubt whether Mr Sharon genuinely intends to evacuate settlers, whose efforts to populate the West Bank he has hitherto stridently championed and funded.
Israeli newspapers this weekend carried reports highlighting this scepticism, with headlines such as "The Big Fraud of Evacuating the Outposts," detailing the continuing flow of funds even to small settlements that Mr Sharon's government has classified as illegal, and noting that not a single inhabited outpost had yet to be permanently dismantled.
Nevertheless, last night's demonstration underlined growing concern among the settlers themselves that the prime minister - in part because of American pressure, and in part because of the concern that Israel will become a new incarnation of apartheid South Africa if it cannot separate from the Palestinians - does intend to pull back from parts of the territories. "We certainly take him seriously," said Benzion Lieberman, chairman of the umbrella Settlers Council. "And the demonstration tonight is designed to send the message that the people won't let you uproot Jews from their homes [in the settlements]."
More than a dozen Knesset members from Mr Sharon's Likud party attended the rally, and a Likud Minister, Mr Uzi Landau, addressed it, denouncing the removal of Jews from parts of the Holy Land.
A Palestinian teenager was shot dead in the West Bank by Israeli troops yesterday, during a clash between troops and Palestinian stone-throwers. Palestinian witnesses said Fuad Jarwan was studying on a balcony when hit by an Israeli bullet; the Israeli army said he had been poised to throw a petrol bomb.