Posted on 09/25/2001 7:00:33 PM PDT by matcrazy
Peres, Arafat to issue statement to implement truce plans.
By Aluf Benn, Ha'aretz Correspondent and Ha'aretz Service.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres: Arafat making a 'serious' effort to reduce violence.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres will meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat at 9:30 A.M. today - the day after Arafat's planned trip to Damascus was unexpectedly canceled.
The last-minute cancelation, for the third time in three months, dealt a severe blow to the thaw in Syrian-Palestinian relations that had characterized the past few months.
The Peres-Arafat meeting, to take place at the Dehaniyeh Airport in Gaza, is slated to end with a joint declaration on a cease-fire and plans for implementing the Mitchell Report. The two men will then meet again in about a week, after both sides have begun implementing the measures stipulated in the joint declaration. Peres told a meeting of Labor MKs yesterday that this second meeting "is not dependent on events."
The measures to be implemented during the first week include the following:
-The joint Israeli-Palestinian security committee will resume operation, with CIA representatives serving as supervisors and arbiters.
-Israel will remove the closure on areas where quiet is maintained and will make it easier for Palestinians to travel between Palestinian cities.
-According to Peres, the Palestinians have pledged to arrest suspected terrorists and start collecting illegal weapons. The joint declaration, however, does not mention this: It is a very general document, formulated as a compromise between Israeli and Palestinian demands by Peres and two Palestinian negotiators, Abu Ala and Saeb Erekat, over the weekend.
After the first week, assuming that quiet is maintained, Israel will withdraw its forces to the positions they occupied before the outbreak of the intifada last year. In addition, the international border crossings and the Dehaniyeh Airport will be reopened and additional Palestinians will be allowed to work in Israel.
This plan as a whole will be considered the initial implementation of the Mitchell Report, which calls for a cease-fire, a six-week cooling-off period and then confidence-building measures, including an Israeli freeze on settlement construction.
Peres told Labor ministers Tuesday that he had already arranged a second meeting with Arafat, which will take place next week. He said there had been a 'dramatic' drop in violence in the territories and that Arafat was making a 'serious' effort to reduce the violence.
"It is very difficult to reach the point of zero shooting," he told Israel Radio. "The fact is, there is a drop [in violence]. It's not enough, it's not absolute. We have to continue working! I am one of the people who is trying to bring about a cease-fire under the very difficult conditions that exist."
Peres met Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Monday morning in an attempt to iron out the differences between them, which are linked to Peres' desire to meet with Arafat and Sharon's cancellation on several occasions of such meetings. Sharon and Peres agreed that the foreign minister would not meet Arafat on Monday and that the meeting should be put off for another 48 hours.
A senior aide to Sharon said Monday that the drive-by killing of an Israeli woman had again reset the 48-hour clock for a Arafat-Peres truce meeting - something for which U.S. officials are fervently pressing amid vocal objections and threats by right-wing politicians. (Sharon has demanded 48 hours of quiet in the territories before the meeting can take place.)
Peres also attacked former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is presently on a trip to the U.S. and who stated that the Bush administration was not exerting any pressure on Israel regarding a meeting with Arafat. "Benjamin Netanyahu is not the president of the United States. Just because he's now in the U.S., does that make him the U.S. president! During this extremely difficult situation, the American president calls...the prime minister of Israel and asks for the meeting to take place. Colin Powell, not exactly an unemployed secretary of state like Benjamin Netanyahu who is busy giving lectures," Peres said derisively, "phones three times a day to ask for the meeting to take place. And Benjamin Netanyahu has the audacity to speak for the Americans."
Netanyahu hit back, calling Peres "the first Israeli astronaut. He is floating around in outer-space. He is completely cut off from reality. He lives in an imaginary world. And he doesn't learn a thing from his mistakes. He said that the Oslo agreement would bring an end to terror. Instead we have gotten unprecedented terror. Four hundred Israelis have been killed. That's like 20,000 Americans being killed."
Change the word "Peres" to "your typical liberal" and you have a universal truth.
What a sick cycle, where the Palestinians NEVER stop the attacks.
But maybe Peres should be on the American list of those who support terrorists.
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Your submissions please:</font color>
AMERICA ATTACKED: Online FReeper library -
Post your links to videos, photos, memorial sites, etc. </font color>
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Even Arafat has one friend. It just goes to show, there's someone for everyone.
They are going to go to the Palestinian Memorial to Terrorism for pizza.
Damned shame his own country isn't listening. We learned the hard way, Israel, and surely you've known better for a long time. Be careful, be vigilant, and for cryin' out loud.............don't trust Arafat!
Arafat is scared; damned scared. He oughta be. The US is pissed and out for heads. He knows his is on the chopping block with the slightest misstep. He's being watched like he's never been watched by us.........and he full well knows it. He also knows that when the WTC towers collapsed, so did his dream of a Palestinian state.
Now, he's just scrambling for survival.
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