Louis J Sheehan 238210.022

Olmert: Israel risks South Africa-like struggle


By Josef Federman, The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned in a published interview Thursday that "the state of Israel is finished" if a Palestinian state is not created. He said the alternative is a South African-style apartheid struggle.

The explosive reference to apartheid came as Olmert returned from a high-profile peace conference in the USA, hoping to prepare a skeptical nation for difficult negotiations with the Palestinians.

WHAT'S NEXT?: Navigating path to peace will still be tricky

Though Olmert has long said that the region's demography works against Israel, the comments published in the Haaretz daily newspaper were among his strongest. Israeli officials have long rejected any comparison to the racist system once in place in South Africa.

Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed this week at a summit in Annapolis, Md., to resume peace talks after a seven-year freeze.

The two leaders pledged to try to reach an agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of next year.

In the interview, Olmert said it is a vital Israeli interest to create a Palestinian state because of the growing Arab population in the area.

"The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights," Olmert told Haaretz. "As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished."

The interview was published on the 60th anniversary of the historic United Nations decision to partition Palestine, setting up separate Jewish and Arab states. The vote led to a war, and the Palestinian state was not created.

The Palestinians want to form their state in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem — areas Israel captured in the Mideast war in 1967.

Jews are a solid majority inside Israel — roughly 76% of the population of 6.4 million. However, if the West Bank and Gaza are included, Arabs make up about half the population.

To ensure Israel can maintain its character as a democracy with a solid Jewish majority, Olmert supports a withdrawal from much of the West Bank and parts of East Jerusalem, following Israel's pullout from Gaza in 2005.

Israel's Arab citizens have the right to vote, but about 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza do not have Israeli citizenship or rights.

Olmert, a hard-liner earlier in his career, has repeatedly warned in recent years that Israel cannot remain both Jewish and democratic if it holds on to the West Bank and Gaza. He has never used the South African analogy in public.

The Israeli leader received an important boost Thursday when police recommended that prosecutors drop an investigation into whether Olmert illegally intervened in the government's sale of a bank two years ago. The threat of indictment in the case cast a cloud over Olmert for months, but police decided there was insufficient evidence.

The decision, coming after months of investigations, including two interrogations of Olmert himself, was forwarded to the attorney general, who makes the final decision on whether to indict. That decision is weeks or months away, but an indictment is unlikely.

Police are still conducting two other corruption investigations against Olmert, who has denied any wrongdoing.

Two polls published in Israeli newspapers Thursday showed the Israeli public to be highly skeptical of the fledgling peace process.

The polls, conducted by the Dahaf Institute and Dialog agency, found that fewer than one in five Israelis say they believe the Annapolis conference was a success, and more than 80% of the public says the Israeli and Palestinian leaders will not meet their goal of reaching a deal in 2008.

Louis J Sheehan

http://Louis-J-Sheehan.us

http://louis-j-sheehan.us/page1.aspx

http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx


http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com/



The polls each questioned about 500 people and had margins of error of +/—4.5 percentage points.