Peres Hails Abbas Comments on Refugees
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
Israeli President Shimon Peres on Saturday saluted as "courageous" remarks by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in which he appears to relinquish Palestinian refugees' right to return to their former homes in what is now Israel.
"Abu Mazen's courageous words prove that Israel has a real partner for peace," Peres said in a statement, using the name by which the Palestinian president is informally known in Arabic.
In an interview broadcast on Friday night by Israeli commercial TV station Channel 2, Abbas said that he had no intention of trying to regain his childhood home in the northern town of Safed in Galilee, today located inside Israel.
"I want to see Safed," he said in English. "It's my right to see it but not to live there."
In a direct pitch to Israeli viewers, apparently aimed at assuaging their concerns ahead of a Palestinian bid to seek upgraded UN status, he reiterated his acceptance of the Israeli state within the borders that preceded its occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day war.
"Palestine for me now is '67 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital," he told Channel 2. "This is Palestine for me. I am a refugee, I am living in Ramallah, I believe that the West Bank and Gaza is Palestine and the other parts is Israel."
Abbas was born in Safed in 1935 in what was then British-ruled Palestine. With the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, he fled into exile along with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs.
"These are significant words," Peres said. "We must all treat them with the utmost respect.
"These positions stand exactly in line with those of Israel and with the clear majority of the population, which supports the solution of two states for two peoples. This is a brave and important public declaration."
The militant Islamic group Hamas, which has said that it will never recognize Israel, has condemned Abbas's comments and called for protest rallies later on Saturday throughout the Gaza Strip.
03 November 2012, 21:59
11
What are the other choices for him. Turn into a suicide bomber.
03 November 2012, 23:36
01
"Palestine for me now is '67 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital," he told Channel 2. "This is Palestine for me. I am a refugee, I am living in Ramallah, I believe that the West Bank and Gaza is Palestine and the other parts is Israel."
So let him say "Next Sunday I want to sit down with Prime Minister Netanyahu to start peace talks".
04 November 2012, 01:07
10
Let him say??? How bout the Israelis start first?... Last time that happened , Rabin was shot by an Israeli with the blessing of the religious community.
04 November 2012, 13:11
00
Government after government in Israel have held talks with the Palestinians, starting with Arafat and now with Abbas, without any positive results. For over two years now Israeli governments have been pleasding with Abbas to come to the negotiation table, but he has refused.
He should remember onc simple phrase "Peace you make with your enemies, not with your friends".
He'll now run to the UN, run to the Arab League and all the other international organisations, but doesn't realise that all of this doesn't bring him one iota closer to the establishment of a Free and Independent State of Palestine, with a seat at the UN, and not as an observer.
04 November 2012, 13:16
00
Those half a million Palestinians are a thorn in the side of Lebanon because when they crossed the border at the behest of the Arab Leadership in 1948, the then government of Lebanon refused to absorb them into the general population and then left them to linger in refugee camps.
As an example the Arab States should take a sharp look at how the 800,000 Jewish refugee from the Arab States were immediately absorbed into the general population of Israel.
