- JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Israel's
right wing hit back on Tuesday with its own alternative peace plan which
rules out the creation of a Palestinian state or dismantling any settlements,
after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned there was no alternative to land
for peace.
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- Following on the heels of the internationally-backed
"roadmap" peace plan and the "Geneva Initiative" which
is being officially launched next Monday, the latest blueprint drawn up
by rightwing MPs and settlers' groups rejects the principle of trading
land for peace.
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- Ben Tzvi Lieberman of the Settlers' Council, said that
an alternative plan was needed as the roadmap and Geneva plans were "very
bad solutions".
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- The plan would involve "the eradication of terrorism,
the abandonment of the principle of peace in exchange for land, autonomous
administration for the Arabs and a final regional accord which would exclude
the creation of a Palestinian state or the dismantling of settlements,"
Lieberman told public radio.
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- Settler sources told reporters that the plan had been
drawn up by rightwing members of parliament, including some from Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's own Likud party, and settler leaders.
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- Sharon, who has said he is considering "unilateral"
measures towards the Palestinians, was reported on Tuesday to have received
a tough time at the hands of his own MPs when he tried to convince them
that there was no alternative to the land for peace principle.
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- The sources said that the plan would also see an expanded
State of Israel, encompassing both the West Bank and Gaza Strip occupied
in 1967, divided into 10 separate cantons -- two of which would be Palestinian.
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- With figures indicating that the Palestinian population
could outstrip the Jewish population in little more than a decade, the
canton arrangement would guarantee a Jewish majority in parliament. The
prime minister would have to be Jewish although the deputy premier could
be an Arab.
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- Lieberman also announced that the Settlers' Council was
launching a campaign against any plans by Sharon to dismantle isolated
settlements in the West Bank or in Gaza, such as the controversial Netzarim
settlement.
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- Sharon was quoted by the Maariv daily as telling his
own MPs on Monday that "there is no other choice ... to painful concessions."
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- "We must not keep three and a half million Arabs
under us. Let it be clear, we will not be in all the places we are now.
That is the situation. We have to understand it."
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- Likud MP Michael Gorolovsky accused Sharon of planning
"to carry out a transfer of Jews."
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- Lieberman said that Sharon was endangering his own majority
in parliament.
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- "The prime minister must understand in time that
if he expels Jews from their houses, he will no longer have a majority
in his government or in parliament," said Lieberman.
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