Herb Keinon
JPost
16 April '10
Posted before Shabbat
(While not the bottom line, there is a lot going on between the lines. Y.)
Israel should not have to remove any settlements in a peace agreement with the Palestinians, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon has told The Jerusalem Post, adding that just as Arabs live in Israel, so, too, should Jews be able to live in a future Palestinian entity.
“If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews?” Ya’alon asked during a wide-ranging interview that will appear in the Post’s Yom Ha’atzmaut supplement on Monday.
“Why do those areas have to be Judenrein?” he asked. “Don’t Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn’t that part of our public discussion? Why doesn’t that scream to the heavens?”
Ya’alon said that if Israel and the Palestinians were truly headed down the path of peace and coexistence, “Jews living in Judea and Samaria under Israeli sovereignty and citizenship” should be possible.
He stressed that “no settlement” should be removed, and that the country’s previous withdrawals – from Lebanon and from Gaza – strengthened Hizbullah and Hamas, respectively.
“That is opposed to our strategic interest and to the strategic interests of the West,” he said.
Ya’alon, who sits on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s top decision-making body, known as the septet, and is among those deliberating on how to reply to US President Barack Obama’s reported demands for a construction freeze in east Jerusalem, said Israel must not give in on the issue.
“We cannot fold on Jerusalem. What is Jerusalem? It is Zion,” he said.
“We disengaged politically in Judea and Samaria, and physically from Gaza,” Ya’alon pointed out. “The policy of the Netanyahu government is that we don’t want to rule over them [the Palestinians]. But not ruling over them does not mean we have to withdraw to the 1967 borders, which are indefensible borders; or that we have to divide Jerusalem in order to bring Hamas snipers into Jerusalem.”
Ya’alon, like the other members of the septet, is very discreet about the discussions regarding the answers to be given to the Americans, and would not even discuss what it was exactly that Obama was demanding.
(Read full article)
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.
Israel should not have to remove any settlements in a peace agreement with the Palestinians, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon has told The Jerusalem Post, adding that just as Arabs live in Israel, so, too, should Jews be able to live in a future Palestinian entity.
“If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews?” Ya’alon asked during a wide-ranging interview that will appear in the Post’s Yom Ha’atzmaut supplement on Monday.
“Why do those areas have to be Judenrein?” he asked. “Don’t Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn’t that part of our public discussion? Why doesn’t that scream to the heavens?”
Ya’alon said that if Israel and the Palestinians were truly headed down the path of peace and coexistence, “Jews living in Judea and Samaria under Israeli sovereignty and citizenship” should be possible.
He stressed that “no settlement” should be removed, and that the country’s previous withdrawals – from Lebanon and from Gaza – strengthened Hizbullah and Hamas, respectively.
“That is opposed to our strategic interest and to the strategic interests of the West,” he said.
Ya’alon, who sits on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s top decision-making body, known as the septet, and is among those deliberating on how to reply to US President Barack Obama’s reported demands for a construction freeze in east Jerusalem, said Israel must not give in on the issue.
“We cannot fold on Jerusalem. What is Jerusalem? It is Zion,” he said.
“We disengaged politically in Judea and Samaria, and physically from Gaza,” Ya’alon pointed out. “The policy of the Netanyahu government is that we don’t want to rule over them [the Palestinians]. But not ruling over them does not mean we have to withdraw to the 1967 borders, which are indefensible borders; or that we have to divide Jerusalem in order to bring Hamas snipers into Jerusalem.”
Ya’alon, like the other members of the septet, is very discreet about the discussions regarding the answers to be given to the Americans, and would not even discuss what it was exactly that Obama was demanding.
(Read full article)
Please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.
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