Tel Aviv, Nov 29 (DPA) Israel has to accept a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or face its end as a separate Jewish state, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in remarks published Thursday.
“If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South Africa-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished,” he told the Ha’aretz daily, as he prepared to leave the US at the end of the Annapolis summit.
The premier said the conference in which he and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged to try to negotiate a peace treaty within one year, was “not a historic turning point, but it is a point that can be of assistance.”
The summit “met more than we could have defined as the Israeli expectations,” he said, but cautioned, “this will not absolve us of the difficulties there will be in the negotiations, which will be difficult, complex, and will require a very great deal of patience and sophistication.”
Olmert said that while Abbas was a partner for peace, “he is a weak partner, who is not capable, and as (special EU envoy) Tony Blair says, has yet to formulate the tools and may not manage to do so.”
Representatives from more than 40 countries attended the US-hosted Annapolis conference, at which Israel and the Palestinians pledged to resume peace talks next month with the goal of sealing a deal by the end of 2008.
The formal negotiations get underway next month.