Moshe Ya'alon says Israel is 'fed up of giving and giving' while Palestinians refuse to recognise Jewish nation state An agreement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not happen in the next "one or two years", Israel's deputy prime minister said today, blaming the Palestinians for the lack of progress. "We're fed up with giving and giving and giving, and not getting any real substance [in return]," said Moshe Ya'alon, the minister of strategic affairs, after this week's leak of secret documents on the peace talks. He dismissed the extensive concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators, revealed in the documents, saying they were insignificant compared to the "core of the conflict – our right to exist". The Palestinians' refusal to recognise Israel as "the nation state of the Jewish people" was preventing a peace settlement, he said. The issue was the most important at stake in negotiations. "We are not ready to discuss territory without recognition of the Jewish state ... We're not ready to start with issues in which we give [ground] and do not get anything." Ya'alon, a member of Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party and a former military chief of staff, said that without recognition, the Israelis could not "solve the conflict, we have to manage it". The issue of refugees was central to the question of recognition, said Ya'alon. Palestinians saw the occupation as beginning in 1948 with the birth of the state of Israel, he said, rather than in 1967, and wrongly believed they could return to Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv, Haifa and Acre. "Our position is not even one refugee is going to be settled in Israel. If you open the door, you open the door." Managing the conflict meant working with the Palestinian leadership on economic reform and security. Ya'alon urged Palestinian political leaders to re-educate a new generation in a "culture of peace, coexistence and reconciliation". Further disclosures about negotiations between the two sides are expected this weekend with the serialisation of the former prime minister Ehud Olmert's memoirs in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. In the last year of his premiership, Olmert offered a deal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, covering borders, Jerusalem and refugees. According to a preview in today's Yedioth, Olmert says in his memoirs: "Never before had any Israeli prime minister presented such a crystallised and detailed position about resolving the conflict as was presented to him on that day. For the first time since the negotiations began, I was very tense. For the first time since I had become prime minister, I truly felt the weight of Jewish history on my shoulders "Abu Mazen said that he could not decide and that he needed time. I told him that he was making an historic mistake. 'Give me the map so that I can consult with my colleagues,' he said to me. 'No,' I replied. 'Take the pen and sign now. You'll never get an offer that is more fair or more just. Don't hesitate. This is hard for me too, but we don't have an option of not resolving [the conflict].'" The deal was never signed. The Palestinians later claimed that an agreement struck with a lame duck Israeli prime minister would have been worthless. Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, today named an American and a Briton in connection with the leak of the documents. He said the Palestinian Authority wanted to question Clayton Swisher, a former state department official and now a reporter for al-Jazeera, and Alastair Crooke, a former British intelligence officer. An unnamed French national was also being sought, he said.Palestinians preventing Middle East peace deal, says Israeli deputy PM
Saturday, 29 January 2011
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