Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Aviv Netanyahu's Change of Heart For the first time since assuming office in April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the prospect of establishing a demilitarized Palestinian state. Netanyahu's departure from his hawkish stance against statehood was welcomed as a "positive movement" by President Obama, who has pressured Israel to resume peace efforts. But senior Palestinian officials vehemently rejected Netanyahu's statements; negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Prime Minister's intransigence on crucial sticking points--like his insistence on demilitarization and refusal to consider the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank--"closed the door to permanent...
Washington is insisting on the settlement freeze in line with the requirements of the 2003 road map for peace, and because the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are the geographic basis of the Palestinian state envisaged in the two-state solution. As long as Israel continues settlement construction, Palestinians doubt its seriousness about agreeing to a viable Palestinian state. But Israel claims it has a right to keep building within the boundaries of its existing settlements to deal with what it calls "natural growth," and it expects to keep the occupied land on which most are built...
...Lieberman seems to have tempered his views, saying that today the "transfer of populations" is neither "acceptable nor possible." He said that even if a Palestinian state were created, Arabs would still be welcome inside Israel, where they currently account for 18% of the population. "Maybe some Arabs would prefer to go to a Palestinian state, but if some want to be Israeli citizens, that's their right," he said...
Lieberman said he is also willing to talk openly with the Palestinians. So far, he said, the Palestinian leadership has failed to contact the Israelis after Netanyahu reversed his earlier opposition to a Palestinian state and said in a major foreign policy speech earlier this month that he now advocates a two-state solution. Lieberman said that previous peace efforts floundered because "it's impossible to impose peace, only to create it." And for that, he said, "We must start with practical issues, like getting rid of roadblocks and illegal outposts [inside the Palestinian territories]. You must understand that...
Before taking over as Israel's foreign policy point person, Lieberman earned the epithet "racist" among Palestinians and liberal Israelis for advocating that the borderline of a future Palestinian state be redrawn so that large Arab communities inside Israel would lose their citizenship and be carved out. It's a notion that many Israeli-Arabs resist, and they proclaim sarcastically that it's better to remain second-class citizens inside Israel, with its better schools and clinics, than join a Palestinian state that, judging by the current mayhem inside the territory, would be riddled with corruption and appalling services. "Better...