In op-ed piece, PA president agrees Jerusalem should not be physically divided, but rather shared.
By HERB KEINONAbbas UN 224.88(photo credit: AP)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas hinted in an op-ed piece in Friday's Wall Street Journal that time was running out on a two-state solution, even as he was readying for a meeting Thursday with US President George W. Bush in which that solution will be at the top of the agenda.
"I continue to believe that we can achieve a lasting peace, with the Israeli and Palestinian peoples living as neighbors in two independent states," Abbas wrote. "But if we do not succeed, and succeed soon, the parameters of the debate are apt to shift dramatically. Israel's continued settlement expansion and land confiscation in the West Bank makes physical separation of our two peoples increasingly impossible."
Abbas's op-ed piece appeared just prior to his visit to New York this week for the UN General Assembly, which will also include a trip to Washington where he will meet with Bush.
Bush's press secretary Dana Perino said Friday that the president was looking forward "to discussing with President Abbas the progress made toward building Palestinian institutions and toward realizing the vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security."
Abbas, in his op-ed piece, also addressed the issue of Jerusalem, saying he agreed that the city should not be physically divided.
"Although Jerusalem's sovereignty must be divided, the city itself can be shared as the capital of two states - east for Palestine and west for Israel," he wrote.
He did not address Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's suggestion to divorce Jerusalem from the current negotiations and set up an international mechanism where the issue of the capital would be addressed at a later date. However, he did indirectly take issue with the idea, saying that the goal of the Annapolis process negotiations "must be a fair, comprehensive and clear agreement."
Divorcing Jerusalem from negotiations now for a shelf agreement would not produce a comprehensive agreement.
Meanwhile, the Gaza-Egypt Rafah border terminal opened Saturday to allow passage of Muslim pilgrims, students and medical patients. Among those to leave was Lauren Booth, Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair's sister-in-law, who was on one of two boats of protesters that set sail from Cyprus to Gaza on August 23. Israel let the boat both in and out of Gaza, believing the protesters were simply looking to create a provocation. But Booth and several other protesters chose to remain behind in Gaza, and claimed Israel and Egypt later blocked her from leaving.
In an interview with the London-based Press TV, an Iranian English-language station, on September 12, Booth called Gaza a "concentration camp" and "a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Darfur."
A few days before the interview, Agence French-Press agency released a picture of Booth shopping in a well-stocked grocery store in Gaza, The Jerusalem Post reported, belying the grim picture she painted of the Strip.
The Free Gaza movement is planning to return by boat to Gaza next week.
French Justice Minister Rachida Dati, meanwhile, visited Ramallah and the Temple Mount Saturday on an official visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The un-married Dati, a close ally of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, catapulted to front pages of the French press earlier this month when she revealed she was pregnant, but would not name the father.
AP and JTA contributed to this report
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