As withdrawal approaches, many wrinkles remain

washington | This much is for sure: Israel, with the blessing of the United States, is determined to begin a handover of the entire Gaza Strip and a good chunk of the West Bank to almost unfettered Palestinian rule on July 20.

How they get there and what happens afterward is still vexing all sides — in backroom meetings, in fights over the fine print and in political gamesmanship.

These questions remain ahead of a summit next week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Bush at his Texas ranch.

Also this week, the U.S. Senate is expected to approve an extraordinary request from President Bush for $200 million in unconditional, fast-track aid for the Palestinians, the United States and Israel are tussling over the shape of a single settlement, and Israel and the Palestinians haven't even begun to figure out how to transfer substantial assets that Israel will evacuate.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel this week not to engage in "wanton destruction" of the homes the 8,000 Jewish settlers will leave behind after the withdrawal. She also called the country's plan to increase construction in the West Bank town of Ma'ale Adumim as "at odds with American policy."

The lack of agreement before such a momentous event has all sides worried.

"God forbid, it can lead to bloodshed," Yitzhak Herzog, Israel's housing minister, said this week in Washington, where he was meeting with U.S. officials.

The most senior officials dealing with the handover are attending the Washington sessions, including Israeli Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres and the Palestinian Authority's civil affairs minister, Mohammed Dahlan.

The World Bank drew up a 12-point blueprint for the transfer, one that both sides have agreed works. But each side is waiting for the other to start the ball rolling.

The World Bank says Israel has yet to hand the Palestinians a list of its assets in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank — a crucial first step — because Israel, which still distrusts the Palestinian Authority, is hoping for third-party involvement in the handover.

Palestinians agree that they, too, are reluctant to work with Israel, frustrated by what they see as Israel's slowness in fulfilling commitments made at a February summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik.

The upshot is that Abbas, who was to meet with Bush before Sharon, has yet to set a date for a Washington visit. Abbas is concerned that if he comes away from a meeting with little to show for it, his relatively moderate allies will be crushed by extremists in July's legislative elections.

The new toughness is not an about-face: Bush is sticking to his historic concessions last year rejecting any demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israel and accepting the reality that Israel will keep large settlements like Ma'aleh Adumim.

But Bush also is under pressure to revive alliances with Europe to tackle instability in Iraq and the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and so wants to see progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace.

A tiny bit of hope surfaced this week after a meeting between Sharon and Gaza-settlement representatives. Participants reported a willingness to cooperate on both sides that seems unprecedented. The prime minister then convened a high-level government meeting on disengagement in his office and pushed a kinder, gentler evacuation.

The Israeli government also said it was willing to consider a plan by some Gaza settlers to relocate en masse to the environmentally sensitive area of Nitzanim, between Ashdod and Ashkelon. While controversial and still in the works, the new plan was seen as a major concession by the settler movement.

Whatever happened, Israeli officials agreed the pullout was written in stone.

"The main thing is to carry out the disengagement," Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said. "Coordination is preferable, but it's not necessary."

That doesn't mean he isn't worried, however.

"It may get stuck into all kinds of disagreements, and that will create a sour atmosphere, and who knows how it will end up?' he said.