Arabs gloomy about unilateralism after Israeli elections

KHARTOUM, Mar 27 (Reuters) Arab governments predicted gloomily today that Israel would take more unilateral steps to retain control of West Bank land whoever wins Israeli elections tomorrow.

''Whoever emerges in Israel, there is no peace process. All the parties in Israel have proved that they are an obstacle to peace... They are all faces on the same coin,'' Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem told Reuters on the sidelines of Arab summit preparations in Khartoum.

''We can't speculate about the result of the elections but the political programmes (of the Israeli parties) are clear and most of them are not conducive to reaching a real peace,'' said the Palestinian minister, Nasser al-Kidwa.

Israelis vote in parliamentary elections tomorrow with polls showing that the centrist Kadima party is on course to win, on a platform of unilaterally defining Israel's permanent borders, without consulting the Palestinians.

A preparatory meeting of Arab foreign ministers, which ended in the Sudanese capital on Sunday, rejected unilateral steps by Israel and reaffirmed an Arab peace initiative offering normal relations with Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal to the borders as they stood on the eve of the June 1967 war.

Israel has repeatedly rejected the 2002 Arab initiative, which would require withdrawal from the Syrian Golan Heights and all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of their state.

Kidwa, referring to Kadima obliquely, said: ''If we take the party to which the polls give the greatest share, it has as its main point arriving at partial unilateral steps. In reality, this means appropriating large tracts of Palestinian land.'' ''There is nothing new in the essence of the Israeli position, which is clear in its unwillingness to arrive at a peace based on two states... This means that most likely we will face difficult phases of confrontation,'' he added.

Egypt and Jordan, which have peace treaties and diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, share the same anxiety about the Israeli shift towards unilateralism, which marks a departure from the policies of the 1990s, but they are reluctant to air them in public, Arab diplomats said.

ELECTIONS-WASIA-ARABS TWO LAST KHARTOUM LARGE SETTLEMENT BLOCKS

''Things are going to be worse (after the elections), simply because of the unilateralism. That puts in jeopardy a peace process based on multilateralism and the road map,'' said a diplomat from one of the two countries.

The first major unilateral step was the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza last year under the leadership of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who later founded Kadima. Arabs welcomed the withdrawal, with some reservations about the new arrangements for Gaza, because it was complete rather than partial.

But the new Kadima leader, interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has said that Israel intends to hold on to some large Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank, dividing Palestinian areas from each other and making it more difficult to create a contiguous and viable Palestinian state.

''They have a policy of unilateral withdrawal from Palestinian land, in separate pieces, setting up Palestinian cantons without links between them to set up a Palestinian state,'' said Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh.

''If the political leaders in Israel continue in this mentality and this spirit, there will be no peace,'' the minister told Reuters.

Sulayman Awad Ibrahim, a political analyst based in Dubai, said the prospects for the Palestinians were dim because the Israelis did not want a peace partner and would use the presence of the Islamist movement Hamas in government as an excuse for acting on its own.

''The party heading the Israeli government is not the problem... I do not think anything will change in the near future so long as the Israelis are rejecting whoever is there on the Palestinian side. Israel is being adamant,'' he said.

Israel, the United States and the European Union are demanding that Hamas, which won elections in January, recognise an Israeli right to exist, renounce violence and endorse old Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Hamas refuses.

''If Olmert manages to get the green light from the United States (on borders) I don't think the Arabs in Khartoum or the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) or anyone can do anything about it,'' Ibrahim added.

REUTERS