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Strategic Affairs Minister Ya'alon: "No Need to Remove Any Settlements"

(Jerusalem Post) Herb Keinon - Israel should not have to remove any settlements in a peace agreement with the Palestinians, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. "If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews? Why do those areas have to be Judenrein?" Ya'alon said that if Israel and the Palestinians were truly headed down the path of peace and coexistence, "Jews living in Judea and Samaria under Israeli sovereignty and citizenship" should be possible. He stressed that "no settlement" should be removed, and that the country's previous withdrawals - from Lebanon and from Gaza - strengthened Hizbullah and Hamas, respectively. "That is opposed to our strategic interest and to the strategic interests of the West." "The policy of the Netanyahu government is that we don't want to rule over them [the Palestinians]. But not ruling over them does not mean we have to withdraw to the 1967 borders, which are indefensible borders; or that we have to divide Jerusalem in order to bring Hamas snipers into Jerusalem." He added that the U.S. administration had misdiagnosed the root of the conflict as territorial, when in reality it was about the failure of the Palestinians to recognize the right of the Jews to be here. "Those who want to continue the Oslo process, who want us to continue to give and give and give, without a Palestinian willingness to recognize our right to a national home, are cooperating with the phased plan for Israel's destruction," Ya'alon said.
2010-04-16 09:05:02
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