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TEL AVIV, Sept 22: If the Palestinians do not stamp out “terrorism”, they would become the next target in the world’s campaign against terror, Peres warned.
“I say to the Palestinians: you do not have much time left for terrorism.
“In the 21st century there is a war against terrorism. If you continue with terrorism, you will be the next target for the world,” Mr Peres said in a closing speech of two-day celebrations marking his 80th birthday.
The elderly statesman and leader of Israel’s opposition Labour party also had a word of warning for right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
“Arik, you know that we have no future in the Gaza Strip — it is impossible,” said Shimon Peres, addressing the Israeli premier by his nickname.
“What good will those settlements do us,” Mr Peres asked. “Why should we sit in Gaza with two battalions of soldiers protecting (the settlement of) Netzarim?”
“Let us get rid of what we have to get rid off ... you make the decision and we will support you.”
“The delay is catastrophic for us and for the Palestinians,” he warned. “How long do you want us to sit in the waiting room of history?” he asked Mr Sharon.
Some 7,000 Israelis live in heavily guarded settlements in the Gaza Strip, an area seized by Israel along with the West Bank in the 1967 war.
CLOCK TICKING: In his message to Mr Sharon, Mr Peres said Israel’s demographic clock was winding down and Jews would lose their majority in the Jewish state if a Palestinian state was not created alongside.
“There are 5.5 million Jews and 4.5 million non-Jews living between the Jordan (River) and the (Mediterranean) Sea, with natural population growth higher on the Arab side,” Shimon Peres said.
About 80 percent of Israel’s population are Jews, but the 1.2 million Arabs in the Jewish state have a much higher birth rate which is causing concern over the demographic balance.
Asked about Mr Peres’s comments, a senior political source close to Mr Sharon said: “The prime minister has mentioned he is willing to make painful concessions. Peres wants to do everything immediately and Sharon says we have to stretch it out over time.”
Congratulating Mr Peres on his more than 50 years in service to the state, the Israeli premier said that Israel would continue to pursue peace but with its feet firmly rooted in reality.
“With all our will to promote peace, we must stand with our eyes open to see the reality that is around us,” he said.
ARAFAT: Shimon Peres said that beleaguered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat fully deserved to be awarded the Nobel peace prize.
The current Israeli government has deemed Arafat an absolute obstacle to peace and agreed in principle to remove the 74-year-old from his West Bank headquarters.
But Mr Peres said that Arafat should be given credit for offering an unprecedented hand of peace to Israel.
“I believe it was right to give (Arafat) the Nobel peace prize because he did three things that no other Palestinian leader did,” Mr Peres told a round-table discussion that featured three other Nobel laureates.
“He declared publicly that he recognized the state of Israel — no other Palestinian leader dared do that so publicly.
“Second, he said he would abandon terrorism, and third he agreed that peace would be based on the borders of 1967 and not 1948.”
Peres, Arafat and the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin were awarded the Nobel prize in 1994 for their work towards the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, ex-South African leader F.W de Klerk, and David Trimble, leader of Northern Ireland’s Ulster Unionist party, were the other prize winners who also took part in the debate.
