OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 14 October 2003 — A draft peace agreement formulated by Israeli opposition figures and Palestinians came under fire in Israel yesterday, with a former premier calling it “delusional” and the justice minister saying it was a “failed agreement”.
Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon told the Jerusalem Post daily that the sides already had the international “road map” peace plan and therefore “it is not helpful to make people think there might be something else”
Sharon’s predecessor Ehud Barak, who tried to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal when he was in office from 1999-2001, told Israel Radio the agreement was “delusional”, “fictive” and “slightly peculiar” and “clearly harms the interests of the State of Israel”.
Justice Minister Yosef (Tommy) Lapid said that while every effort had to be made to hold a dialogue with the Palestinians, this was the job of a lawfully elected government. “No one who had any sense of responsibility would have signed something like this,” he said.
Beilin predicted in Cairo yesterday that the unofficial peace pact will produce a “big revolution” toward peace. “The adoption of the document will make a big revolution in the Middle East,” Beilin said after he and Abed Rabbo discussed the draft with Egyptian officials.
“Israel is a democracy and everyone has the right to talk,” Beilin said, echoing Palestinian comments that the plan is designed to mobilize grassroots support for peace.
Abed Rabbo said the Palestinian Authority “supports” the plan drafted in Jordan over the weekend and that it will be signed in Geneva on Nov. 4, the anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.
Beilin and Abed Rabbo were among more than 40 Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals, peace activists and former government ministers who gathered in a Jordanian Dead Sea resort for three days, Palestinian officials said.
The agreement, tentatively known as “the Geneva Agreement”, was hammered out by teams led by former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.
Ahmed Qorei chaired a meeting of the emergency Palestinian Cabinet in the West Bank Town of Ramallah yesterday but cast new doubt over the likelihood of his staying on as prime minister beyond the next few weeks. Qorei reached a deal with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat over the weekend to head the emergency government for the moment.
But a row over the choice of interior minister, the crucial role for control of security in the Palestinian territories, now looks likely to lead to Qorei’s departure from the scene at the end of the cabinet’s one-month term of office. Qorei yesterday told the Arab satellite television network Al-Jazeera: “I am more inclined not to continue in my post.”
Arafat and Qorei have been at loggerheads over the choice of interior minister, a position which was originally meant to be filled by Nasr Yussef but who later refused to take the oath of office on October 7.
A senior official said that Arafat had named a close ally, Hakam Balawi, as interim interior minister even though Qorei has been continuing to push for Yussef to be given the job. Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said that the Cabinet meeting had focused on the prospects of concluding a mutual ceasefire with Israel as well as a controversial Israeli army raid in the southern Gaza Strip over the weekend.
