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Breakfast With Sharon

(New York Sun) Seth Lipsky - * The prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, says there are certain fundamentals for the Jewish state - that the Palestinian Arab refugees are not going to be able to return to Israel, that certain major blocks of Jewish population in the West Bank are going to stay, and that the Palestinians will not be able to force Israel back to the 1967 borders. * And that the only plan going forward can be the roadmap, the journey along which, he has long said, begins only when the Palestinian Arabs have halted terror and dismantled the structure for it. * It's important to get beyond treaties between leaders. He stresses the importance of education in the Muslim countries. Relations may have improved with Egypt, but beyond the friendly talk, he sees Egypt as behind the boycott against Israel that still obtains in many countries, with Israel not marked on maps and with exchanges blocked between academic and trade groups. * "One should be very, very careful," he says. "The Arabs until now do not accept the birthright of the Jews to have an independent Jewish state in the homeland of the Jews." * Sharon retells how the late pope, John Paul II, said to him: "I would like you to remember that the Land of Israel is holy to Muslims, Christians, and Jews - but it was only to the Jews that it was promised." "That," said the pope, "is the difference between terra sancta and terra promissa."
2005-05-27 00:00:00
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