Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, an opponent of the peace process, says that he believes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be willing to go through with giving up 86 percent of the occupied West Bank as a Palestinian state.
The 14-86% split is said to be Ariel Sharon’s vision, and Elkin insisted that the Palestinians rejected that because it didn’t include any of occupied East Jerusalem, and that this proved a deal couldn’t be made.
Netanyahu’s referendum requirement means any deal Netanyahu would nominally be willing to “go for” would still have to face an uphill battle with settlers, and analysts say they don’t think any deal is likely to happen.
Israel is said to be planning to offer some limitations to West Bank settlement expansion for the duration of the talks, though it will be well short of even the “partial settlement freeze” previously talked about.
The “talks” for now are just preliminary talks, and whether they ever amount to full scale talks remains to be seen. The US is pressing hard for that, but Israeli factions are warning that President Bush offered written guarantees to support Israeli claims on the occupied territories.
A Palestinians state without any weapon to defend itself, state which everything needs to be under the control of Israelis is not a state this how the Palestinians live now, so what is it that this man presenting 86% of West Bank as a state. Look people, the only language that this regime of brutality, a entity of Zionism will ever understand is a total economic and political boycott introduced and implemented by the world, otherwise you will hear the same story over and over again.
This is the usual James Baker Sharm el Sheikh Bush/condi/mubarak "road map" type of charade to rope in the Arab masses behind yet another war. if satanyahuy is adding a serious 86% spin on this strategy, it means war is just around the corner then.
Well maybe not 'give up'. How about trade … for some 'bantustans' in the beautiful Negev?
That's more than fair. It's a better deal that the poor jews got from the Germans and Poles in the Government General. And the Arabs voted for that.
I spy another obvious symbolic number from the histrionic profiteers –I don't think Sharon intended to fulfill a deal either.