OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 4 February — The hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the United States yesterday dismissed a peace call by Yasser Arafat in the US press, but despite the snub, hopes rose that a relative calm in the region could lead to a new cease-fire. "We know very well who (Arafat) is, one of our successes has been to expose his real face to the world, and these remarks change nothing, even if the tone seems more conciliatory," Sharon told Israeli television.
He said that Arafat, writing in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, had stuck to demands which Israel deems unacceptable, such as the right of return of Palestinian refugees who fled Israel when it was created in 1948 and proclaiming Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
Arafat had, however, hinted for the first time he was questioning the official Palestinian line on the right of millions of refugees to return, which Israel has constantly refused, fearing a flood of Palestinians would disrupt the specifically Jewish nature of the state. "We Palestinians must be realistic with respect to Israel’s demographic desires," Arafat said. But he added that Israel cannot ignore the "legitimate rights of these innocent civilians."
The leading dove in Sharon’s unity government, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, expressed optimism about the latest developments. "If Arafat will do what he has said, it is a good beginning," said Peres, who drafted in late December a rough draft of a peace plan with Palestinian parliamentary Speaker Ahmed Qorei.
Sharon also brushed aside the Peres-Qorei proposal for the fast-track creation of Palestinian state to give a boost to the log-jammed peace process. He said he was against setting any timetables and added that the Peres’ proposals "did not hold." Nonetheless, Peres shrugged off Sharon’s comments yesterday and said he saw a "ray of hope" in current talks with the Palestinians. "I think we are now beginning again to build a bridge, which I hope will be accepted," he said from New York where he was attending the World Economic Forum and had held talks with Qorei.
