Sharon warns Jewish settlers will be relocated after summit.

Byline: Aaron Davis

JERUSALEM _ Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Sunday attempted to brace his country for the growing possibility that he'll call for the evacuation of scores of controversial Jewish settlements in the West Bank at Wednesday's peace summit in Aqaba, Jordan.

Sharon's one-sentence suggestion _ "We could dismantle these illegal settlements." _ sparked a right-wing warning of a possible Israeli civil war and left Israeli security officials preparing for possible domestic assassination attempts on Sharon.

The intense reactions to Sharon's thought, offered during his weekly cabinet meeting, underscored the rising tensions here over literally every word that will be uttered by Israeli and Palestinian officials on Wednesday when President Bush arrives.

"We're starting to see the real arguments about what's said and what's not _ it really hints at the unchanging issues that must be resolved," said David Horovitz, editor of Jerusalem Report magazine who has covered Israeli-Palestinian politics for 20 years. "The talk of settlements is radical for Sharon. It's very dramatic, people are shocked."

U.S. officials spent the weekend urging both Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to push the envelope for Wednesday's summit. Bush wants the two sides to go beyond the "unequivocal" _ but largely generic _ statements of support for peace that are required at the outset of the road map peace plan, as it's called.

Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and National Security Council Mideast Envoy Elliot Abrams bounced back and forth on Saturday and Sunday along the pockmarked road between Jerusalem and the de-facto Palestinian capital of Ramallah, hoping to broker language for Wednesday's summit that would make it different from past failed peace efforts. They suggested Sharon declare an "end to occupation" of Palestinian territory. But Israeli officials, who don't see their control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an "occupation," soundly rejected that phrase.