Posted on 05/10/2006 4:54:38 AM PDT by Esther Ruth
Israel Gives Palestinians Until Year's End to Show Desire for Peace
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
JERUSALEM — Israel will give the Palestinians until the end of the year to prove they are willing to negotiate a final peace deal, and will unilaterally set its final borders with them by 2008 if they don't, a close associate of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's said Tuesday.
Justice Minister Haim Ramon was the first Israeli official to set a deadline for the Palestinians' new militant Hamas rulers to disarm and recognize the Jewish state.
The Palestinians' moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas, of the rival Fatah party, has tried to persuade Israel to bypass Hamas and talk peace with him, but Olmert has made it clear that he is not prepared to negotiate with Abbas if Hamas doesn't change its violent ways.
Hamas wasn't immediately available for comment, but even the cutoff of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid and Israeli transfer payments hasn't been able to pressure it to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.
"Through the end of this year, 2006, there will be honest attempts to talk to the other side," Ramon told Israel's Army Radio.
"If it becomes clear by the end of the year that we REALLY have no partner, and the international community is also convinced of this, then we will take our fate into our own hands and not leave our fate in the hands of our enemies," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
excerpt
Olmert, who was a major force behind Israel's summer withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, has said he intends to pull Israeli settlers out of heavily populated Palestinian areas in the West Bank while fortifying major settlement blocs and holding on to the West Bank's Jordan River Valley. His original timetable had called for a pullback by 2010, but a top aide said last month that Israel planned to conclude the withdrawals by the end of U.S. President George W. Bush's second term in office, at the end of 2008.
Asked how long the withdrawal would take, Ramon judged that it would be possible to complete the process in 18 to 24 months.
They could give Hamas-loving Paliwhackers until the end of the millenium to end their killing, it's not going to happen. Any group willing to strap bombs to their kids cannot be negotiated with.
A proper solution....give them till the end of the week, then clean house!
Personally I think its long past time they cleaned house..no need to wait a week.
Procrastination, never solves a problem. Israel should act now.
'Course not. They're getting funds and guns from elsewhere while their hospitals run out of medicine.
The twits in Israel are going to give the pallies land whether they cooperate or not. What incentive do the pallies have to talk to Israelis? It will all be theirs anyway. Its too bad Olmert cant see it either.
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"The twits in Israel are going to give the pallies land whether they cooperate or not. What incentive do the pallies have to talk to Israelis? It will all be theirs anyway. Its too bad Olmert cant see it either."
The Israelis are not stupid. They know exactly what they can and cannot do. We don't see it because we don't look at it like the Israelis do. If Israel goes back to let's say the 1967 borders, then Jordan and Egypt (Syria will not get its land back) get back their land and the Palis become their problem not the Israelis.
At that point, the Palis are SOL because they will no longer have anything to negotiate. In addition, groups like Hamas and Hizbollah will be pressured because neither the Jordanians or Egyptians have a need for them.
This is long term strategy.
Yep: neither Jordan nor Egypt want the Pali problem.
Israel, you are the most patient county in the world. You keep turning the other cheek and you get nothing in return. If you keep doing the same thing, you will continue to get the same results in hoping to reason with profoundly evil terrorists.
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