Egypt, Israel Spar Over Whether Arafat Is a Negotiating Partner
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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (R) meets Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in Cairo August 5
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CAIRO,
August 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli Foreign Minister
Shimon Peres began talks Monday, August 5, with Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak to find ways to stop the cycle of violence and restart
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The
talks showed that Egypt and Israel’s top diplomats backed a
political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, but sparred over
whether Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority was the negotiating
partner.
Mubarak,
accompanied by Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, received Peres at the
presidential palace in northern Cairo, in the first such encounter
between the two in more than a year, according to an Agence
France-Presse (AFP) journalist.
The
meeting comes amid a wave of Palestinian resistance attacks against
Israeli targets that Islamic resistance movements Hamas said are in
retaliation to the Israel deadly air strike in Gaza City last month
that killed one of its leaders and 17 other people, including 12
children.
Maher
said Sunday that “Egypt will propose to Israel what needs to be done
to achieve peace and security for both the Israeli and Palestinian
peoples and to reach a political settlement” during the
Peres-Mubarak talks.
He
also called on Israel “to withdraw its forces from areas of the
Palestinian Authority and to stop its aggression against the
Palestinian people.”
Egyptian
sources quoted by the Saudi-owned, Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat said
Peres would propose to Mubarak ways “to emerge from the current
crisis and restart the negotiations.”
Al-Hayat,
which is based in London and distributed in Arab capitals, said Peres
had requested the meeting.
Israeli
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said at a press conference with his
counterpart, Ahmed Maher that “Israel very much agrees that the
solution can be and must be a political one, that with the force of
arms all of us will fail.”
Maher,
who had joined Mubarak earlier in talks with Peres, also appealed for
a political solution and a withdrawal of Israeli troops to the borders
held before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Peres
said Israel was stymied in its desire to move from the current
conflict, including a Palestinian bombing of a bus and other violence
that have left two dozen people dead in the past week to dialogue.
“From
our standpoint the greatest problem we face is the lack of an address
on the Palestinian side,” Peres said after meeting Mubarak.
“We
have the Palestinian Authority, we have the Palestinian leadership
that were elected but they are being misgoverned by the appearance of
12 different armed groups, each of them shooting in different
directions and killing again and again the agenda of the debate,”
Peres said.
“If
the Israeli government doesn’t know the address of the Palestinians,
I can give them the address of the Palestinians,” Maher replied
later.
But
a smiling Peres interrupted him: “How many others are you going to
have.”
Maher
responded, saying: “The address is Chairman Arafat, who has been
democratically elected by the Palestinians. We have to overcome this
sort of rhetoric.
“We
have a Palestinian Authority and Israeli government. Let them come
together and negotiate a serious solution,” Maher said.
“There
may be dissident forces who do not obey the orders,” the Egyptian
minister said, comparing the situation to that in other countries and
even in Israel where some settlers go “on rampages” without
government backing.
Maher
also said he hoped that “serious negotiations” take place “so
that we can put an end to the sufferings of the Palestinian people and
of the Israeli people.”
The
Palestinian Authority has denounced the latest attacks, many of them
carried out by Hamas, but said the Israeli government’s hard-line
policies were to blame.
Last
month Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, Parliamentary
Speaker Avraham Burg and Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh visited
Egypt for talks with Egyptian leaders.
Egypt,
the first Arab country to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, in
1979, has long sought to bridge the divide between its Palestinian
allies and the Jewish state as part of a drive for a comprehensive
Middle East peace.
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