Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 23, 1995 TAG: 9505230099
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Medium
The plan disclosed last month to seize 140 acres of land to build homes for Jews outraged the Arab world and threatened to derail the already troubled peace talks. The Israeli reversal was hailed by PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who was under intense pressure from Arab critics to suspend negotiations with the Israelis on expanding Palestinian self-rule.
But the immediate motive for the reversal was Rabin's political survival.
The surprise decision saved his left-wing coalition government from probable defeat Monday in planned no-confidence votes in parliament called by two small Arab-controlled parties normally allied with the Rabin government.
The government was in danger because the right-wing opposition bloc, led by the Likud Party, planned to vote with the Arab parties even though Likud supports confiscating land in east Jerusalem.
Rabin told a news conference: ``There was a possibility the government would fall and this would have endangered the entire peace process.''
Israeli hardliners, opposed to the 1993 Israel-PLO accord, denounced the Rabin decision as a devastating about-face on Israel's longstanding claim to Jerusalem as the ``eternal and undivided'' capital of the Jewish state.
``This is a government of people lacking backbone who made a humiliating and degrading surrender,'' said Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert.
The status of Jerusalem remains the most incendiary issue in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Israel annexed the eastern Arab half after capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war.
Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the future capital of their long-sought independent state. They viewed the continuing Israeli seizure of Arab land as contrary to the 1993 accord which stipulates formal negotiations over the future of Jerusalem to begin next year.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres made the announcement to Israel's parliament after an emergency cabinet meeting.
by CNB