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No peace if Palestinians insist on refugees

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A right-wing demonstrator holding a sign showing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat wearing a Nazi helmet takes part in a protest near the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem Sunday July 30, 2000. Several right-wing supporters demonstrated against the concessions that Barak was willing to make to the Palestinians in Camp David summit, and called him to resign. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

July 31, 2000 

JERUSALEM (AP) - If the Palestinians insist that over a million Palestinian refugees must have the right to return to Israel, there will be no peace agreement, an Israeli Cabinet minister said Sunday.

Israel will cease to exist as a Jewish state if unlimited numbers of Palestinian refugees are permitted to enter its territory, said Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, an architect of the peace process. "For us this is really a question of whether we will survive or not," he told Israel radio.

The future of the refugees was one of the issues discussed by Israel and the Palestinians at the Camp David summit, where the two sides failed to negotiate a permanent peace treaty. Despite the failure of the summit, Israel and the Palestinians were to resume talks Sunday, both sides said. Israel's Oded Eran and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat were to meet in the West Bank town of Jericho where Erekat lives, Erekat said. Eran's office confirmed he was headed to Jericho.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has said that most of the refugees should be rehabilitated in the countries where they now reside, Jordan, Syria or Lebanon and some should be allowed to return to a Palestinian state which would be established in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Jordan, Syria and Lebanon reject that solution, as do the Palestinians.

	A right-wing demonstrator wearing a mask of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and a traditional Arab head dress takes part in a protest near the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem Sunday July 30, 2000. Several right-wing supporters demonstrated against the concessions that Barak was willing to make to the Palestinians in Camp David summit, and called him to resign. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Barak is reportedly willing to permit some 60,000 to return to Israel under a family reunification scheme, but this has not been officially confirmed.

Sunday's Israeli-Palestinian meeting was not expected to be substantive, but allows the two sides to keep in touch at a sensitive point in their relationship.

Eran and Erekat are in charge of negotiations on implementation of outstanding issues in the Oslo interim agreement under which Israel agreed to make a third troop withdrawal in the West Bank, handing over more land to the Palestinians. Israel also has to release 250 Palestinian prisoners from jail.

Barak has said he wants to merge the third redeployment with the permanent settlement. The Palestinians say he must fulfill all Israel's commitments under the interim accord before a final agreement is reached.

In an interview Sunday in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament expressed distrust of the Israelis.

Speaker Ahmed Qureia, known as Abu-Alla, said at the summit Israel offered the Palestinians custodianship over Jerusalem's Temple Mount compound, also known as Harm el-Sharif, site of Islam's third holiest mosque. But he said Israel insisted on retaining sovereignty over the compound. Qureia was on the Palestinian negotiating team at Camp David.

Qureia said that if the Israelis maintained sovereignty over the site, where an ancient Jewish temple once stood, "in a few years ... they can come and destroy or demolish the mosque, and this is one of the most dangerous proposals I have ever heard."

Israeli authorities have been at pains to protect the mosque, known as Al-Aqsa, from extremists - Jewish or Christian - and have expressed the fear that if any harm came to it the peace process would end and Israel would be at war with the entire Islamic world.