 |
 |
 |
|
|
Former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon and Palestinian professor Sari Nusseibeh presented their peace initiative to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. (AP)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| By Ellis Shuman October 30, 2003 |
|
| |
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan applauded on Tuesday the efforts and courage of former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon and the Palestinian president of Jerusalem's Al-Quds University, Sari Nusseibeh, for launching a grassroots campaign to gather signatures on a petition calling for a peace settlement based on two states.
"People to people initiatives can play an essential role in generating the momentum needed for peace," Annan's office said on Tuesday, after his meeting with the two men. Annan said the grassroots effort "helped to create a vision of a common future" between Israelis and Palestinians.
But Annan stressed that "there is no substitute for the official representatives of the Israeli and Palestinian people returning to the negotiating table and progressing down the road to peace as called for in the Road Map," according to the statement.
Ayalon and Nusseibeh, who previously served as the PLO's chief Jerusalem representative, launched the People's Voice initiative in June with the aim of gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures that would force decision makers on both sides to compromise towards a negotiated solution based on 1967 borders.
This week, Ayalon and Nusseibeh said they have collected 160,000 signatures - 100,000 Israelis and 60,000 Palestinians.
"I think that the Palestinians and the Israelis deep down are clearly interested in finding a solution," Nusseibeh said. "What we're trying to do is provide them with the instrument through which they can express themselves loudly and clearly in favor of a peaceful solution and a settlement. We believe that if it's expressed, it will be heard by the respective leaderships," he said.
"You must realize that for the last 50 years, all the initiatives and the agreements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are agreements or initiatives that have come from the top and are parachuted down, so to speak, on the people," Nusseibeh said. "Now this is a chance for the people to say that we want change... and we call on you, the leadership, to make this possible."
Ayalon told reporters after the meeting with Annan that ''Time is running out. Time is against the option of a two-state solution, which is the only way for Israel to have a safe home and the Palestinians to have a state.''
At the meeting, Annan also praised the peace initiative launched by former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.
Whereas the "Geneva Accord" formulated by Beilin, Abed Rabbo and other prominent left-wing Israeli politicians and Palestinian officials is a proposed final status agreement complete with detailed arrangements for the separate Israeli and Palestinian states, Ayalon and Nusseibeh's initiative is based on a concise, six-point Statement of Principles, which call for a demilitarized Palestinian state; an open Jerusalem; and international compensation for Palestinian refugees.
In a related story, former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali will reportedly come to Israel on behalf of One Voice, an additional grassroots peace initiative that seeks to find common ground between the "silent majority" of Israelis and Palestinians. Ali "is a man of peace and he wants to support the process," said Daniel Lubetzsky, president of the America-based PeaceWorks Foundation that launched the initiative.
Lubetzsky said that media reports of imminent visits to Israel by other celebrity backers of the program, including actor Brad Pitt; his wife, actress Jennifer Aniston; actors Edward Norton and Jason Alexander; and the husband and wife team of Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman; are "not totally accurate but they're not far from the truth."
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
