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Ahmed Qureia, accepts Palestinian prime minister's post
By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
09/08/03: (Knight Ridder Newspapers) JERUSALEM - Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qureia agreed on Monday to become his people's new prime minister while insisting he cannot move forward on the U.S.-backed peace plan unless he gets more support from Washington than was given his predecessor.
Qureia, 65, whose appointment must still be confirmed by Palestinian lawmakers, said he would not set himself up for failure, an apparent reference to outgoing Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned Saturday.
Abbas quit after losing a power struggle with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and failing to get the White House to put more pressure on Israel to follow through on peace plan provisions.
Israel, which remains in military control of most West Bank towns, has ignored a requirement that it freeze construction in Jewish settlements and dismantle settlement outposts established since 2001. Israeli leaders in turn point to the Palestinian Authority's failure to dismantle militant groups as required by the peace plan.
Qureia, who is closer to Arafat than his predecessor, also called on the United States and Israel to change their approach of ignoring and undermining Arafat.
"If (the Israelis) do not want to change their attitude towards us, we do not need a government nor a prime minister," Qureia said after an hourlong meeting with Arafat at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Both countries say Arafat is linked to terror attacks against Israel, a charge the aging leader denies.
Israeli officials declined to comment Monday on whether they would support Qureia, but chafed at his overtures toward Arafat. According to Israeli Army Radio, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Secretary of State Colin Powell in a phone call that there could be no progress if Arafat pulls the strings.
"We will judge any Palestinian prime minister by his actions," Shalom said in a written statement Monday. "He will have to decide whether he stands with Arafat or whether he stands against terrorism."
But Qureia, like his predecessor, is unlikely to launch any crackdown on militants, said close friend Hatem Abdel Qader, a Palestinian legislator from East Jerusalem. Abbas refused to use force, instead appealing in vain to the groups to voluntarily lay down their arms.
Forcibly dismantling the groups "is an impossible condition that would lead to Palestinian civil war. That would put Israeli security in more danger than right now," Qader added.
Qureia said he planned to work on negotiating another cease-fire, but insisted Israel end its military strikes against Palestinian militants. Israel intensified those strikes - particularly against the Islamic organization Hamas after it sent a suicide bomber who killed 22 people aboard a Jerusalem bus on Aug. 19.
Arafat asked Qureia, a moderate who negotiated successfully with Israel on the 1993 Oslo Accords, to form a new government Sunday. Yair Hirschfeld, a University of Haifa professor who was the first Israeli to negotiate with Qureia in talks that led to the accords, said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the new prime minister would fare better than his predecessor at propelling the peace plan to its next phase.
Qureia, known also as Abu Ala, will be more persistent in extracting support he needs from international backers of the plan, Hirschfeld predicted. "Abu Ala wants to play a very important role in Palestinian history. This was very clear to me the first time I met him in December 1992," he said.
Qureia wasted no time in reaching out to his constituents on Monday, saying his priority would be to improve the lives of Palestinians who are largely confined to their communities because of Israeli military checkpoints erected during the 3-year-old conflict.
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