Global Policy Forum

By Jason Keyser

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, an architect of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, said the self-rule agreement was flawed from the beginning because it did not start by granting the Palestinians a state.

"We thought that autonomy is basically, almost independence," said Peres, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating the 1993 Oslo accords which gave autonomy to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"Today we discover that autonomy puts the Palestinians in a worse situation. We have to give them equal rights, equal recognition. We cannot run their lives, their economy," he said in a speech to 70 members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

The nearly decade-long peace process has collapsed under the heavy toll of more than a year of escalating rage and bloodshed. The economies of Palestinian towns and cities have been damaged and many have been jobless for the duration of the fight, now moving into its 17th month.

The suffering could have been avoided, Peres said, if the Palestinians had had a state from the beginning. "We cannot keep three and a half million Palestinians under siege without income, oppressed, poor, densely populated, near starvation," he said, adding that without a visible political horizon the Palestinians will not make peace with Israel.

Peres and Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia have been working on a peace plan in three stages - a cease-fire, followed by Israel's recognition of Palestinian statehood in undefined borders and negotiations on a final peace deal within a year. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer have opposed the plan, saying it is unrealistic.

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