Shaath: No West Bank violence unless settlers start it

PLO official Nabil Shaath said Sunday that he does not see any risk of unrest in the West Bank unless settlers instigate it.

Speaking with Army Radio, Shaath said, "We are not going to allow any unrest in the West Bank, neither politically nor security wise." Politically, he said, "I think our people are quite satisfied not to go back to

violence and are going in this fight to continue their peaceful struggle for independence and for real peace and a two-state solution."

Addressing the risk of violence, Shaath added, "I don't see any risk of having unrest in the West Bank unless the Israeli settlers want to create that."

Asked why the Palestinian leadership refuses to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, Shaath responded that the Jewish people, on their own, decided "that they have really built their state that is not only for the Jewish people because 22 percent of Israelis are not Jewish."

Presented with statements attributed to the Palestinian Authority envoy to the United States last week that a Palestinian state would be without Jews, Shaath said that Maen Areikat "never said 'Jewish free,'" but rather "that at the beginning of our peace, we want to separate."

Asked whether settlers would be allowed to live in a future Palestinian state, he added, "If [settlers] decide to accept Palestinian citizenship and buy the territory that they have and live as individual citizens, then why not?"

Addressing the possibility to avert a vote in either the United Nations Security Council or General Assembly on recognition of Palestinian statehood and an immediate return to direct negotiations with Israel, the senior Palestinian official put forth one condition.

"Of course there is a chance to start direct negotiations," Shaath said, "you stop your settlement and we'll go tomorrow to direct negotiations."

IDF: Some flotilla activists planning to kill soldiers

Army sources tell 'Post' they have intelligence showing some participants in upcoming flotilla plan to use chemical weapons against troops; flotilla member Dror Feiler: Claims "are attempt to justify IDF violence."
IDF sources said Monday night that new intelligence information obtained in recent days shows that participants of the flotilla planning to break Israel’s sea blockade over the Gaza Strip later this week plan to kill IDF soldiers who board their ships.

According to the information obtained by the IDF, some of the participants have prepared sacks with sulfur, which they plan to pour on the soldiers as they board the vessels.
“This is a chemical weapon, and if poured on a soldier it can paralyze him,” an IDF source told The Jerusalem Post Monday night. “If the sulfur is then lit on fire, the soldier will light up like a torch.”
The information was obtained from closed meetings held by participants on the ships during which some voiced their intention to “murder Israeli soldiers,” according to the IDF.
In response to the IDF's statements, Dror Feiler, an Israeli participant on the upcoming flotilla, told Army Radio that the claims "are an attempt to justify in advance IDF violence."
Feiler said that as long as it is up to flotilla organizers, activists planning to harm IDF soldiers will not participate in the mission.
"If Israel suspects any one, it should provide us with information so we can stop him. Violent people are not permitted to take part in the flotilla," he said.
"All of the passengers signed a pledge of non-violence, because we don't want a repeat of what happened in the last flotilla," Feiler stressed. "We have no intention of confronting anyone. We just want to arrive in Gaza in peace. Israel has no reason to stop the flotilla."
"The situation in Israel, with its army and security forces fighting a group of 20 organizations, is funny. The world does not believe it, and neither does the State of Israel itself," he said.
In related news, despite earlier predictions that members of the Turkish organization IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation would not participate in the flotilla, it now appears that some members will sail with the ships alongside other radical Islamic activists.
The Navy has begun its final preparations to stop the vessels, and the IDF sources said that commandos who board the ships will be prepared for a wide-range of scenarios from no violence at all to extreme and violent resistance from the passengers.