Peres: Israel Has No Claim to West Bank
Tue Feb 24, 1:22 AM ET Add World - AP to My Yahoo!

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON - Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in turning over control of much of the West Bank to Yasser Arafat's Palestinians, said Monday that Israel has no moral claim to the land or to Gaza and must give up every inch of the territories.

Peres, in a speech after meetings with Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said "time is short" — no more than four months — for Israel to come to terms with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.

"The opening is not for a long time," he said at a dinner sponsored by the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation, a dovish private group.

While Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed a withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, Peres said the offer of his long-term political foe was inadequate and would only perpetuate conflict with the Palestinians.

Israel must give up all of the land that it captured in the 1967 Middle East war, he said. "If you keep 10 percent of the land you keep 100 percent of the conflict," Peres said.

His prescription for a pullback includes gradual withdrawal from the West Bank after Israel gives up all of Gaza to the Palestinians. "It is not a political decision, it is a moral decision," Peres said.

He said Israel should provide the Palestinians with a state that is viable and contiguous.

"I think Sharon is having a hard time making up his mind," Peres said. "It won't be simple. It won't be easy."

If Israel does not follow through with a total withdrawal, "catastrophe is waiting in the corner," he said.

Earlier, at a news conference in the doorway of the State Department, Peres flashed his long-standing optimism that the Palestinians wanted peace with Israel.

Also, he said, "good news" was emerging all over the world, with Libya pledging to end its nuclear weapons program and Cyprus on a path to settle its 30-year division.

But mostly, Peres was cheered by Sharon's partial pullback proposal while insisting it was far from enough to bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians.

Peres was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, along with Arafat and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for the Oslo accords that gave the Palestinians wider control of their lives and of parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

Six years later, the accord crumbled into the violence of a Palestinian uprising that targeted Israelis both in the territories and in Israeli itself and took the lives of hundreds of people on both side as Israel fought back fiercely.

Peres became the focus of criticism as a symbol of a process many Israelis believe allowed the Palestinians to gain strength and weapons for their battle against the Jewish state.

Still, now over 80, Peres continues to push for far-reaching Israeli concessions as a pathway to a Palestinian state that he and President Bush say can coexist peaceably with Israel.

Even with peacemaking virtually nonexistent now, Peres said there is "a new reality in the Middle East and Sharon has to face it like everyone else."

"We shouldn't be blind," he said of Israelis who remain skeptical of Israel giving up land and the Palestinians setting up a state on it.

Most Palestinians want to live in peace with Israel, he said. But Palestinian leaders must decide "which camp they want to live in," the one of terror or the one of counter-terror.

Three U.S. officials met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders last week in the Middle East and will report Friday to Powell and Saturday to Bush on their findings.

The White House and State Department gave no public account of the talks or what the officials found in the region. Nor did they offer any account of Peres' meetings with Powell and Rice.

Source: Yahoo! News

<font color=orange>Totally agree with old Peres on this! The Israelis SHOULD pull all the settlements out of the West Bank and Gaza and then build their security wall around the border. </font>

<font color = lightgreen>It is wonderful that Peres has come to this conclusion. Unfortunately, I have some bad news for him: even if Israel completely gives up all land taken in 1967, they will still have serious problems with violence from those Palestinians who wish to see Israel disappear forever. As I have said many times before, without some sort of miracle of diplomacy this conflict will not end until one side is completely decimated.</font>

yeah, the region will still have many problems, but they will be problems with small militant groups that will lose much of their credibility and popularity in Palestine once Israel completely pulls out of the W.B./Gaza. Militancy will still be present, but it will be slightly easier to contain. And Israel will finally have legality (and I daresay 'morality') on their side.

[ 02-25-2004, 11:59 PM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]

Yep, Heirophant, I agree. If (a big IF) Israel were to give back all the land, then it would have the moral high ground. Better yet, if there were a Palestinian state, terrorist attacks by Palestinians could be viewed as an act of war, and Israel would be justified in responding by attacking an enemy state.

The way I see it, if there were two separate nations, the Palestinians would be faced with having to curtail the terrorism or face a fate similar to Afghanistan's when it harbors terrorists. ;) THAT just might keep them in check.

That has some interesting prospects TL .....

Giving people a stake encourages good behavior. If the Palestinians have something (a nation of their own) to lose if they misbehave, they just might get their s**t in order. ;) However, if left in a "nothing to lose" situation, they will continue to exercise terrorist tactics.

[ 02-26-2004, 01:53 AM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

Agree with The Hierophant really - if Isreal just keeps holding out then its more ammo for the extremists. Theres not going to be any growth of a progressive movement under the conditions the Palestinians are under now, and whilst there will still be people wanting Isreal gone for ever there will be far fewer prepared to suicide bomb in order to get it.

However I certainly don't like the idea of the acts of terror being construed as acts of war once the Palestinians have a state. Thats completely ludicrous - just because those people would now be citizens of the state of Palestine doesn't mean that their actions are considered to represent that states policy. Only if the Palestinians completely failed to take action against those terrorists would Isreal be able to implicate the Palestinian state in any wrong doing. Richard Reed was English, doesn't mean that him lighting his shoelaces was an act of war by us against the USA.

A long time ago some men built a wall in Berlin. Boy, was that a flying success... [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img]

That's what I said. The state would have to harbor or sponsor terrorism. Notice the Afghanistan comparison.