Israel To Remove Roadblocks, Reduce Checkpoint Waits
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JERUSALEM — Israel agreed yesterday to remove about 50 roadblocks in the West Bank, reduce waiting time at checkpoints, and issue entrance permits for Palestinian Arab workers in steps fulfilling commitment to a 2002 peace plan.
“Today Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak agreed on concrete steps to implement the road map,” a U.S. State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said in a statement issued in Jerusalem after Secretary of State Rice met with the two leaders.
“All of these steps can provide meaningful improvements in the lives of ordinary Palestinian and Israeli citizens, if they are successfully implemented,” the statement said.
The road map is a plan sponsored by Russia, the United Nations, the European Union and America that sets out steps leading to the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state. Under the plan, Palestinians are committed to rein in militants. Israel must stop building in West Bank settlements as well as ease travel restrictions.
Israel and the Palestinian Arabs started negotiating a framework peace agreement under the auspices of President Bush in November. The accord is aimed at determining the guidelines for the founding of a Palestinian state. The talks are intended to move forward as both sides implement the road map.
Settler compensation: The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and a former Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, have met secretly about 50 times to iron out obstacles and “the end is in sight,” the daily Yediot Ahronot said today, without citing anyone.
Mr. Livni today told reporters that Israel must soon work out the terms of compensation for any Jewish settlers willing to leave the West Bank, where some communities will have to be dismantled under any accord reached with the Palestinian Arabs.
“In principle, as someone who went through the entire process of disengagement, and the need to compensate those who were evacuated, i think it is right to work on this as early as possible,” Mr. Livni said, referring to the 2005 evacuation of some 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.
