RAMALLAH, West Bank, 1 April 2004 — Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei yesterday blamed worsening security and economic conditions, as well as internal divisions, for his government’s lack of progress since he took office.

He admitted to divisions among the heads of the unwieldy Palestinian security services, which he said led to his Cabinet’s failure to deliver on pledges to reform the security apparatus and crack down on radical militants.

“The government took steps but the results were limited, for objective and subjective reasons, and owing to conflicts and a chaotic situation between the security services and their heads,” he told the Palestinian parliament in a speech defending his government’s performance.

The international community, starting with the United States, has long pressed Qorei and his predecessor, Mahmud Abbas, to streamline the some 12 services that Israel accuses of being involved in attacks against its troops and civilians.

Qorei also reiterated his government’s opposition to Palestinian militant groups targeting Israeli civilians, saying such policy was “used by Israel to bring on more violence and sanctions against the Palestinians.”

Such attacks did not serve the Palestinian national interest and also served to weaken the Israeli peace camp and increase hatred between the two peoples, Qorei said, a week after Israel assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

“The situation has remained the same since the government was formed. The (Israeli) siege, the aggression continues. The economic situation is deteriorating, the internal security situation is ... getting worse,” he said.

Qorei also slammed the international community, especially the United States.

“All this is happening with the international community’s complacency and the United States’ blatant bias” toward Israel, he said.

Commenting on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from most Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, Qorei said that “in truth, we do not know if it is plan or a simple proposal.”

“If the withdrawal happens, it will be important for us and for the other people in the region ... and must open the way to resuming peace negotiations,” he said, insisting that Israel should also pull out of the occupied West Bank.

Qorei posed several conditions for the Gaza withdrawal.

“It must be a full withdrawal, with a dismantlement of all settlements and the relocation of all settlers inside Israel,” he said.

“Israel must withdraw from all crossing points, international borders, land, air and sea,” he added.

Moreover, the evacuation should not be unilateral, as envisaged by Sharon, but coordinated with the Palestinian Authority, with international observers on the ground.

Finally, he said that the plan should not be “a substitute for the road map,” the stalled peace blueprint drafted by the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia that calls for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

Israeli troops bulldozed two unoccupied Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank yesterday, scuffling with angry protesters seeking to block removal of one of the enclaves.

The Israeli move, a modest step toward meeting demands of a US-backed peace “road map,” came on the eve of a visit by three American envoys to discuss Sharon’s plans to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat dismissed the removal of the Hazon David outpost, near the West Bank city of Hebron, and the Bat Ayin West outpost, near Bethlehem, as cosmetic.

The outposts are among six unauthorized enclaves slated for removal after Israel’s High Court lifted an injunction that had barred the evacuation.

Meanwhile, some 40 Jews settled in the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan yesterday, and were pelted by their new neighbors angry at Israel’s judaization policy in the area.

They moved overnight into a new six-story building in the heart of this densely-populated neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Six policemen were lightly wounded and nine Palestinians were arrested following the clashes, police spokesman Gil Kleiman said, adding that petrol bombs were found on a nearby roof.

The Kfar Hatemanim (Yemeni village in Hebrew) group was among several organizations that bought the building and another house, which stand on the same spot where the first Yemeni Jews settled here in 1882.

“We are going back home,” read a leaflet from the organization, which is headed by Haim Bashari, a former adviser to Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We bought these homes so that descendants of Jews who lived there more than 60 years ago can come back home,” he said.

Beyond the “return” of the descendants of Yemeni Jews to this neighbourhood, the organization makes no secret of its intention to consolidate Jewish presence in Arab sectors of the holy city.

Its leaders even admitted that only two of the new residents are descendants of Yemenis who once lived in Silwan.