ISRAEL: Israel's plan to withdraw from some occupied territory aims to rule out a Palestinian state indefinitely, with full US approval, Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's chief of staff said yesterday.
Mr Dov Weisglass's remarks on the move to give up the Gaza Strip next year, while keeping large chunks of the West Bank, surprised US diplomats, who said Washington remained dedicated to a "road map" peace plan for a Palestinian state.
Mr Sharon, wary of alienating Israel's powerful US ally, said later he still backed the "road map" effectively dismissed by Mr Weisglass.
Palestinians, whose calls for road map talks have been spurned by Israel's ruling right, condemned Mr Weisglass's message.
"I believe he has revealed the true intentions of Sharon. We told the quartet [of US-led peace mediators] eight months ago that the Gaza plan was designed to undermine their road map," said Negotiations Minister Mr Saeb Erekat.
"The significance of our \ disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. It supplies the formaldehyde necessary so there is no political process with Palestinians," Mr Weisglass said in an interview published in the Haaretz newspaper.
Meanwhile, Israeli armoured forces are still storming into northern Gaza in a bid to smash militants responsible for rocket fire into Israel.
Seventy-five Palestinians have been killed, 30 of them civilians, medics say. Three Israelis have been killed.
An Israeli tank fired two shells into blocks of flats yesterday, killing a Palestinian father and his son in one home and wounding nine children asleep in another.
The most seriously hurt was 18-month-old Wisal Obed Felfel, who doctors fear will not survive brain injuries from shrapnel.
Her eight siblings, aged from seven months to 11 years, have shrapnel wounds and burns.