Israel must immediately recognize a Palestinian state as a national interest and
work with the Palestinians to find a replacement for the Oslo Accords, Meretz
Party head Zehava Gal-On said on Tuesday.
Gal-On was speaking at a press
conference she held in Tel Aviv to present the party’s four-point diplomatic
platform.
Under the plan, Israel and the Palestinians would carry out
negotiations with the Palestinian Authority to work out agreements on security,
economics, water and other issues, and would find a temporary replacement for
the Oslo Accords until negotiations on a final-status agreement would begin. In
addition, Israel would agree to freeze settlement construction, release
Palestinian prisoners, and remove checkpoints in the West Bank.
According
to Meretz, the goal would be to reach an end to the conflict and a settlement of
claims on both sides within four years.
In addition, the party plan calls
for the founding of a “regional Quartet,” made up of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey
and Jordan, inspired by the international Quartet of the US, the the EU, the UN
and Russia. The Quartet would handle negotiations between the two sides and
would work along with delegates from the Arab League to examine implementing the
2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
During the press conference, Gal- On
presented Meretz as the “last anchor of the peace camp,” and said the Israeli
public that “wants peace and believes we can reach a solution” are the
alternative to “the policies of [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu, which stand
to bring us to a third intifada.”
She added that the Labor party led by
Shelly Yacimovich is no longer a left-wing party, rather a centrist party that
is only thinking about how to join Netanyahu’s government.
Gal-On also
said there is “no partner for peace in Israel,” and that a goverment led by
Netanyahu and Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman – which would come
into power with a heavily rightwing list – poses a danger to the two-state
solution.
Ilan Baruch, a former Israeli diplomat who resigned from the
Foreign Ministry in 2011 saying he can no longer represent the country, said at
the press conference that the policies of the Netanyahu government are
strengthening the status of Hamas on the Palestinian street.
“The future
of Hamas and Fatah depend on our leadership, and to our dismay, the Israeli
government and those who stand to join it are greatly strengthening those
Palestinian voices saying that all of Palestine belongs to us and there is no
place for Israel,” said Baruch.
The Meretz plan also calls for a peace
settlement to be based upon the 1967 lines, with mutual territorial swaps, east
Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state and settlement of the
Palestinian refugee issue.
The plan also calls for Israel to reach out to
Syria once the civil war ends and a stable government takes over – with
Jerusalem required to be ready to return the Golan Heights to Damascus as part
of a peace deal.
In addition, the plan says that Israel must continue to
“maintain cooperation” with the Gaza Strip for the sake of the economy and
welfare of its residents, regardless of who rules the coastal territory.