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SHARM EL-SHEIKH (Egypt), Jan 30: Israel offered on Wednesday to resume peace negotiations with Syria “immediately without conditions” while asking Egypt to pressure the Palestinians to stop a new wave of violence.
Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said he had sent the offer to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad through Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whom he met for talks at Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“Israel is ready to enter negotiations with the Syrians immediately without conditions,” Ben Eliezer told reporters after the talks with Mubarak.
Ben Eliezer is a hardline member of Israel’s Labour Party, the junior partner in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s right-wing Likud government, and Egyptian sources have said his visit must have had Sharon’s backing.
Negotiations between Syria and Israel have been frozen since Jan 2000. Damascus insists on its right to reclaim in full the Golan Heights, seized by Israel in 1967, before resuming negotiations.
Ben Eliezer stood by Israel’s demand that the Palestinians must first take action before a resumption of peace talks, when he urged Egypt to pressure the Palestinians to bring an end to the violence.
“This was a very, very crucial meeting. The (Egyptian) president is going to try everything to generate peace between the Palestinians and Israel,” he said.
The Egyptian authorities have steadfastly blamed Israel for the violence.
The meeting officially came about after Mubarak extended an invitation to Ben Eliezer, but Israeli defense sources said the real pressure had come from the European Union, which asked the Egyptian leader to meet Ben Eliezer.
“Egypt holds the key to leading and influencing all the region in general, and the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat in particular, to end the violence and to contribute to the peace process,” Ben Eliezer told reporters.
“Israel is committed to the peace process with the Palestinians but it appears today we have no real partner for achieving peace. But I want to make clear that the Palestinian people are not my enemy. What we’re fighting is terror,” he said.
“Both people have suffered enough. The only place to make peace is around the table. No one has been injured or killed sitting around a table,” he said.
Israeli defence officials said that Mubarak had spoken with Arafat by telephone on Tuesday night for the first time in over a month, although it was not clear what had been said.
Speaking after the meeting with Ben Eliezer, Mubarak told reporters that if he had known the Karine A was carrying weapons he would have stopped it and expressed concern over charges Iran was supplying weapons to the conflict.
The Israeli navy intercepted the freighter in the Red Sea’s international waters on Jan 3 as it was carrying 50 tons of what Israel charged was mainly Iranian weapons for Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.
SOLDIERS’ REFUSAL: The Israeli parliament on Wednesday debated the refusal of 52 reserve officers and soldiers to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories, with critics charging the men with treason and supporters praising their courage.
Most of the dozen or so deputies, whether left or right-wing, who took the podium criticized the insubordination, saying it was a potential threat to Israel’s security, introducing a political debate into the army’s ranks.
The refusal petition of the 52 provoked a lively debate before being forwarded to an investigating committee by a ballot.
In their petition published on Jan 25, the 52 soldiers, almost all of them second-lieutenants and from combat units, notably parachute, tank and elite infantry corps, refused to participate in the “oppression and occupation of the Palestinians”.
“We will continue to serve in the army when it concerns defending the state of Israel but not in the task of oppression and occupation of the Palestinians,” the reservists’ petition said.
It marked the first time since the Sept 2000 start of the Palestinian intifada that soldiers circulated a refusal to serve in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
“The territories are not part of Israel and the Jewish settlements that have been established will eventually be dismantled ... we will not continue to fight for them,” the soldiers said.
“We will also no longer fight beyond the ‘Green Line’ with the goal of oppressing, expelling, starving and humiliating an entire people,” they said, speaking of the border which separates Israel from the West Bank.
Since Friday, the number of signatories has doubled.
Army chief of staff General Shaul Mofaz on Monday said the move was a “very serious” matter.
“The signatories do not represent all the reservist officers and soldiers who understand their mission and work day and night to defend the state of Israel and protect its inhabitants,” an army command spokesman said.—AFP
