Sharon Reiterates Threat To Annex West Bank Territory

By Chris Marsden
World Socialist Website
10 January 2004

Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon used the January 5 congress of his Likud Party to reiterate his threat to permanently annex land on the West Bank and thereby unilaterally determine the shape of a truncated Palestinian entity.

First made on December 18 of last year, his threat to abandon the timetable set out in the so-called “Road Map” for peace has received scarcely a word of criticism from Washington—despite the US being the main sponsor of the proposals. In effect, he has instead been given a green light for his expansionist aims and the escalating brutality that such plans will necessitate.

The Road Map provides for the establishment of a Palestinian state with provisional borders, as a step towards the creation of a definitive state by 2005.

In last December’s policy speech to a security conference in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, however, Sharon laid down an ultimatum to the Palestinian Authority (PA): that if they failed to suppress all opposition to the Israeli occupation by outlawing militant groups and carrying out mass arrests, he would unilaterally separate Israel from the Palestinian territories within a matter of months.

http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-marsden100104.htm