The issue of a national referendum on an international conference for Middle East peace has been raised in the ongoing debate between Premier Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres over the peace process.
Peres said legal experts are examining the idea and would announce their conclusions in a few days. Shamir said the approach is wrong because referenda are foreign to the Israeli political system.
Peres pressed his idea during a visit to the Hebrew University Tuesday. He said the government was unable to reach agreement on the issue of peace and therefore it should be taken to the people.
But Shulamit Aloni of the Citizens Rights Movement (CRM), a strong supporter of the peace process, sided with Shamir. She said an international conference was too technical an issue to be decided on the basis of a national referendum.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
