Israel plans to remove some West Bank settlements,
Shimon Peres said. The Israeli vice premier said Saturday that, while Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan to “realign” the West Bank deployment was shelved
after last year’s Lebanon war, settlement evacuations are still on the agenda.
“Yes, settlements will be removed – not all the settlements, and I’m not even
sure most of the settlements,” he told Israel’s Channel 2 television, adding
that the number of communities evacuated could be in the dozens. “I think that a
serious effort will be made to do that which we undertook to do, which is
removing settlements.” Peres said the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority could
affect the scale and pace of the withdrawals by accepting peace talks with
Israel.
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