Netanyahu: 'We Are Not Suckers'

After rejecting a U.S. proposal for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, a defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went before Jewish settlers Tuesday to declare that Israelis would not be made "suckers" in the peace process.

"We are not suckers," Netanyahu told high school students in Maale Adumim, a settlement east of Jerusalem. "A situation in which we will give and not receive is not acceptable. Israel cannot give and give and not get anything back in return from the other side."

Netanyahu rejected a Washington proposal to withdraw from 13 percent of the West Bank, and accused the Palestinians of failing to do enough to fight terrorism.

"We will not accept the equation of land in return for nothing, or land in return for terror," he said. "That will not work. We have given lands to the Palestinian Authority, but instead of bearing peace, it bore terror."

American envoy Dennis Ross wound up four days of talks Monday without reaching a deal on an Israeli troop pullout from the West Bank, one of the key issues over which Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have stalled.

Ross said Monday that the stalemate was starting to "diminish the hopes that people have for seeing a very different Middle East and for building and achieving peace."

A breakdown of those hopes was evident Tuesday in the West Bank town of Salfit, near Nablus, where clashes broke out. A Palestinian protest against Israeli land confiscations deteriorated into stone-throwing. Israeli troops responded with rubber-coated metal pellets, slightly injuring a 16-year-old student.

Israel has rejected calls by the United States to freeze expansion of settlements. The Palestinians see the settlement building as precluding talks on the future of the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Tuesday in Amsterdam, where he is meeting with Dutch officials, that the peace process "is facing serious trouble." But Arafat said he believed American and European pressure would "push it forward."

Netanyahu has said Israel can give up no more than 9 percent of the West Bank and has denied Israeli media reports that he had made a compromise offer of 11 percent

But Netanyahu said Tuesday that Ross did not go away empty-handed.

"We gave each other some very good ideas—what I would call bridging proposals," he said. "We are going to study these proposals and we will probably…have to meet again."

A Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Palestinians accept the 13 percent proposal, as long as the United States guarantees that Israel will also carry out another promised withdrawal later, something Netanyahu rejects.

The official said Ross had raised a five-point initiative that included an Israeli-Palestinian committee to study a West Bank withdrawal. The Palestinians demanded Aerican involvement in the committee, fearing that otherwise nothing would ever come of it, the official said.

By Danna Harman.
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