9May11
May 10, 2011
Ma’an News Agency - 9 May 2011
President Mahmoud Abbas is still a partner for peace with Israel, the country’s President Shimon Peres said in an interview published on Monday.
The president’s stance is at odds with that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has told Abbas to choose between peace with Israel or peace with Hamas, following the decision of the Palestinian leadership to reconcile the secularist Fatah with the Islamist Hamas.
Abbas is “absolutely” still a peace partner “because he wants to hold negotiations for peace with Israel,” Peres told the Jerusalem Post, saying the Palestinian leader “opposes violence and he wants peace.”
Peres told the paper he had “criticized” Abbas over the surprise reconciliation deal which was signed last week in Cairo and aims at ending four years of bitter rivalry, but that it “doesn’t free me of the need to talk with him.”
He also told the paper the Palestinian bid to seek UN recognition of an independent state based on 1967 borders would not end the conflict if it was not linked to Israel’s security needs.
“I’m in favor of recognizing them provided they recognize Israel’s security needs,” he told the English-language daily.
“Going to the UN solely with a declaration of statehood, without giving an answer to Israel’s security concerns — that will mean a continuation of the conflict, not an end to the conflict,” he said.
Peres, who was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 as an architect of the Oslo Accords on Palestinian autonomy, said there would be no breaking the impasse in negotiations while everything was being dragged into the public eye.
“If these were private talks … it would be possible to argue and be flexible, but when the conditions are public, it is impossible to move forward,” he said.
Direct talks between the two sides stalled last September in an intractable dispute over Jewish settlement building, with the Palestinians refusing to talk while Israel builds on occupied land they want for a future state.
Peres said only “a short path” was left to reach peace and he was optimistic that an agreement could be reached.
Israel, the president said, must work to delineate boundaries that would see the Jewish state incorporate the main settlement blocs and protect its security interests.
“We only have to determine where the three blocs will be in quiet negotiations,” he said.
“The Palestinians say that they want the territory of 1967, not the borders, the territory,” he said, referring to the 1967 Six-Day War during which Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“And we want an agreed-upon land swap that is intended to both leave the blocs and to meet Israel’s security needs,” Peres said.
Peres: Declaring Palestinian state means continuation of the conflict
[ 09/05/2011 - 03:11 PM ]
NAZARETH, (PIC)-- Israeli president Shimon Peres has said that he was against the declaration of an independent Palestinian state by next September, claiming that it would not lead to solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Peres was quoted by Jerusalem Post on Monday as saying that the Palestinian Authority’s insistence on gioing to the UN in September to ask for official recognition of a Palestinian state would not solve the conflict.
He said he refused such a unilateral step.
Peres said that he accepted recognizing a Palestinian state in the event the Palestinians recognized the security needs of Israel.
He said that both sides, the Israelis and the Palestinians, should agree on the idea of exchanging land to guarantee retaining Jewish settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty and preserving the security needs of Israel.
Uprooted Palestinian
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