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Arafat`s refusal of Camp David offers was a mistake: Peres
Israel`s foreign minister Shimon Peres said today that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat made a mistake in refusing former Premier Ehud Barak`s peace offers, and that both sides now are paying the price.
Israel's foreign minister Shimon Peres said today that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat made a mistake in refusing former Premier Ehud Barak's peace offers, and that both sides now are paying the price.
At a July 2000 summit at Camp David, Maryland, and in another round of talks in Egypt this past January, the Palestinians turned down a proposal that would have given them a state in Gaza and more than 90 percent of the west bank with a foothold in Jerusalem.
The Palestinians held out for more land and a right of return to Israel for Palestinian war refugees and their descendants.
I think it was a mistake, and now we are paying for it, Peres said during a meeting with the foreign press in Jerusalem. Peres has been critical of Barak's strategy, especially his insistence on an all-or-nothing peace deal that both strained the Israeli public's willingness to make concessions and would have forced the Palestinians to declare an end of conflict without achieving all of their aims.
But in his comments, Peres dismissed the Palestinians' explanations about why they could not strike a deal, and the violence that broke out in September 2000.
They (the Palestinians) say that they were short of time, or it was a misunderstanding, said Peres, who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace prize with Arafat and then-Premier Yitzhak Rabin. I personally cannot explain it.
If Palestinian militants' attacks on Israel ended, he said, Israel would end its military strikes against the Palestinian authority and other targets.
Bureau Report
The Palestinians held out for more land and a right of return to Israel for Palestinian war refugees and their descendants.
I think it was a mistake, and now we are paying for it, Peres said during a meeting with the foreign press in Jerusalem. Peres has been critical of Barak's strategy, especially his insistence on an all-or-nothing peace deal that both strained the Israeli public's willingness to make concessions and would have forced the Palestinians to declare an end of conflict without achieving all of their aims.
But in his comments, Peres dismissed the Palestinians' explanations about why they could not strike a deal, and the violence that broke out in September 2000.
They (the Palestinians) say that they were short of time, or it was a misunderstanding, said Peres, who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace prize with Arafat and then-Premier Yitzhak Rabin. I personally cannot explain it.
If Palestinian militants' attacks on Israel ended, he said, Israel would end its military strikes against the Palestinian authority and other targets.
Bureau Report