by Yoni Hirsch, Shlomo Cesana and Eli Leon
Defense minister tells think tank that Arabs' peace overtures effectively say: "First you have to give up territory -- and then we the Arabs will consider relations with you" • Sweden may cut aid to Palestinians because of stalled peace process.
Israel's Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon (right) says Arab peace overtures are designed to extract concessions from Israel. Pictured above: Ya'alon with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Photo credit: AP  |
The Arab Peace Initiative is nothing but "spin" that is designed to have Israel commit to certain conditions even before negotiations commence, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said on Friday in a speech before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The Arab Peace Initiative, Ya'alon continued, was "not a decision of the Arab League," and reiterated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that "we are ready to sit without preconditions with any initiative but without dictation."
He said the terms of the initiative effectively say, "First you have to give up territory -- and then we the Arabs will consider relations with you."
[The initiative] is a dictation. [But] to sit at [the] table without preconditions -- we are ready with any initiative," Ya'alon stressed.
According to Ya'alon, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to jump start the peace process "have failed so far," because the Palestinians have set preconditions.
Science and Technology Minister Yaakov Peri criticized Ya'alon's comments, saying it was "vital and important that Israel make every effort to return to the negotiating table; such statements only pull us further apart." He said that Ya'alon should not have ruled out the Arab Peace Initiative. "With the necessary adjustments on security, it is one of the main courses we can pursue and it includes a regional umbrella and the guarantees of other countries," Peri said. "We must put some serious thought into it rather than dismiss it out of hand."
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki deflected Friday a question on whether she agreed with Ya'alon's view on the Arab Peace Initiative. "Well, I haven’t seen his specific comments, but let me just repeat why -- or just tell you why the Arab Peace Initiative is significant or why the secretary thinks it’s significant," she said. "And that is because it shows a unity among several Arab nations, that they support an effort to move towards a peace plan and that they would support that if it were to be completed. And that’s why it’s significant. So beyond that, I’m not going to respond to back-and-forth comments that I haven’t even seen."
Ya'alon's visit to the U.S., his first as defense minister, included talks with his counterpart, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. They both arrived at the Pentagon via a V-22 Osprey, which Israel plans to acquire from the U.S.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Sweden's international development cooperation minister, Gunilla Carlsson, told a Swedish radio station that her country may cut aid to the Palestinian Authority because of the lack of progress in the peace process.
"Is it worthwhile for us to continue to construct the necessary structures for a two-state solution if Israel and Palestine don't want to sit down at the negotiating table?" Carlsson asked, according to an English transcript on Radio Sweden's website. Swedish taxpayers will ultimately lose patience, she warned. "[The Swedish people] want to see results and if the requisite conditions for that are not met they must suffer the consequences," she said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israeli settlement construction over the weekend. In a statement released by his office on Friday, Ban criticized the Israeli government's plan to build 1,000 housing units in east Jerusalem and the expected expansion of Itamar, Bruchin and Beit El. "These are unhelpful decisions that undermine progress towards the two-state solution," the statement read.
Yoni Hirsch, Shlomo Cesana and Eli Leon
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10041
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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