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Started by Izzeddin Musa
Mon, 20 Oct 1997 00:00
Netanyahu Wants Peace, Vows War on Militants
Author: Izzeddin Musa
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 00:00
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 00:00
176 lines
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8824 bytes
## Nachricht <6gCKkRFTg2B@forum.nadeshda.gun.de> vom 20.10.97 21:14 weitergeleitet ## Ursprung : /A R C H I V 1 ## Ersteller: i.musa@NADESHDA.gun.de (Izzeddin Musa) ## Nachricht <Chameleon.971018193002.palgate@> vom 18.10.97 19:00 weitergeleitet ## Ursprung : I.Musa@Forum.gun.de ## Ersteller: issa@baraka.org (Issa Sarras) ========================== F r e e d o m ========================== auto-info: help@alquds.net >>>> Linking Palestinians & Their Friends ========================================================================= He wants peace while keeping the land, expanding settlements, annexing our capital, and keeping our people refugees forever. He accuses us of seeking the annihilation of his people, while he is carrying out a systematic annihilation of our identity and a destruction of all the conditions and requirements necessary for our secure existence. Not only that, look at those in and out who are helping him. Issa --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Netanyahu Wants Peace, Vows War on Militants By Bradley Burston JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced hope for peacemaking progress on the eve of a fresh U.S. mediation bid, but vowed on Saturday there would be no let-up in a war to the death on militants "who seek our annihilation." Washington's special envoy Dennis Ross was due to return to the region on Sunday, 10 days after helping cajole Netanyahu and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to meet in a sudden summit, their first direct talks in eight crisis-ridden months. Despite Ross's cautiously optimistic proclamation of the summit as a "new beginning," conflicting demands have kept the parties wary and progress minimal. Palestinians argue that Jewish settlement expansion violates existing peace deals and blocks progress towards new ones. Israel, meanwhile, demands Arafat curb Islamic guerrillas and prevent their deadly attacks on Israelis. Netanyahu acknowledged that Arafat's Palestinian Authority had heeded his call to arrest Moslem militants in its midst. "In the last weeks there has been progress," Netanyahu told Israel Radio in an interview aired on Saturday. "We hope this progress will continue and not be halted. Of course, if it is stopped this will greatly hamper parallel progress in the peace process." The fragile underpinnings of the process gave way in March, when Netanyahu authorised a new Jewish settlement in Arab East Jerusalem, seen by Palestinians as capital of a future state. Ensuing Islamic militant suicide bombings have deepened the crisis. Netanyahu pledged a "war to the death" against guerrilla groups, whom he termed "a very cruel enemy, one who thinks that by murderous blows he will drive us from this land." "We will not halt the war on men who seek our annihilation." Turning aside widespread condemnation of a botched Mossad mission in September to kill an official of the Islamic militant group Hamas in Jordan -- then Israel's closest Arab peace partner -- Netanyahu said: "The only way to fight terror -- there is no other way -- is to strike at it incessantly, every place, in order to sap its capabilities and undermine its belief it will achieve its aims." Both sides said a U.S.-proposed "time-out" on settlement expansion would be among issues raised during the Ross visit. "We hope this time our efforts will be concentrated on substance and on the cessation of all unilateral steps and above all settlement activities," PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said after a Palestinian cabinet meeting in Ramallah on Friday. Israeli officials said Ross is to meet Netanyahu on Sunday. Erekat said the envoy would meet Arafat on Sunday night. A U.S. embassy official declined to comment on Ross's agenda. "We assume the definition of time-out will be discussed as well as the Israeli proposal to go directly to final status talks," said Netanyahu aide David Bar-Illan. Negotiations leading towards a permanent accord were to have been concluded by May 1999, but have got nowhere since a ceremonial launch just before Netanyahu's election in May 1996. Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy and senior PLO negotiator Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) may hold talks during the Ross visit in advance of their scheduled Washington meeting on October 27, Palestinians said. At their recent summit, hailed by Washington, which sponsored the talks, Netanyahu and Arafat agreed to meet regularly. They said contacts should resume "on all levels between the two sides." But there has been little sign of substantive movement on the fundamental issues dividing the sides. Palestinians have expressed concern over a paucity of results in nine committees discussing unfulfilled aspects of interim peace deals. Netanyahu told the radio opinion polls showing his support slipping among Israeli voters were of no interest to him. "What is important is not the polls, but distancing these murderers from our city limits, from our wives and our children." Separately, the founder of the Islamic militant group Hamas opposes a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians and believes Israel must disappear from the map, the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet said. "Israel, as the Jewish state, must disappear from the map," the newspaper quoted Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as saying in an interview published on Saturday. Speaking in his home town of Gaza, Sheikh Yassin condemned the killing of women, children and elderly people as a violation of Islamic law even during a time of war, the newspaper said. But he justified suicide bombings by quoting the answer given to a man who asked a prophet about killing in defence of his property, Svenska Dagbladet said. "You will enter paradise, the prophet answered. And if I kill the intruder? 'He will burn in hell'," Sheikh Yassin, 61, told the paper. The wheelchair-bound cleric was released from an Israeli jail on October 1 as part of a prisoner swap with Jordan after a bungled attempt by Israel's Mossad spy agency to assassinate Khaled Meshal, a Hamas leader living in Amman. Israel said last month it had established that four of the five men who killed 21 Israelis in two suicide attacks in Jerusalem, on July 30 and September 4, were Hamas activists in their 20s. Sheikh Yassin condemned Palestinian President Yasser Arafat for signing a peace deal with Israel. "If someone had stolen a million dollars from you, would you be satisfied if the thief returned one hundred dollars? That is Arafat's solution, but we are demanding that absolutely everything be returned," he told Svenska Dagbladet. He said Hamas would lay down its weapons only if Israel gave in to certain demands, the newspaper said. "Only if Israel withdraws from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, evacuates the settlers, frees all the prisoners and avoids involvement in Palestinian affairs can we consider a temporary armistice," he was quoted as saying. Sheikh Yassin said his movement regarded Jews as enemies for stealing Palestinian land. "Now I, like four million other Palestinians, am homeless. We are demanding the return of our stolen homeland," he said. Until his release, Sheikh Yassin had spent eight years of a life sentence in an Israeli jail for founding Hamas and ordering guerrilla attacks on Israeli targets.
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