Commparing Yasir Arafat to Adolf Hitler, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said this week that if the Palestine Liberation Organization leader were to come to Israel, as the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat did, “we’d put him in prison.”
In an interview with Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor of The Washington Times, published by the paper Wednesday, Shamir called the U.S. dialogue with the PLO “useless” because, Arafat’s acceptance of Israel and renunciation of terrorism is “all nonsense, lies.”
Shamir said the only way Arafat could prove that the PLO is sincere is to “dissolve the organization.”
He said Arafat was like Hitler, because “they belong to the same family of demagogues and totalitarians, enemies of the Jewish people, men who think nothing of killing millions to achieve their objectives.”
At the State Department Wednesday, spokesman Charles Redman would not comment on Shamir’s remarks.
But Redman repeated the U.S. position on its dialogue with the PLO. “This dialogue is not an end in of itself,” he said. “We have said that to be of use, it will hopefully produce concrete steps that contribute to peace in the Middle East.”
But Shamir said the U.S.-PLO dialogue is “not healthy, because it gives the PLO more prestige and importance, and in such a way that it discourages moderate elements who would like to find a path to real peace with Israel.”
Shamir outlined his proposals for a solution to the Palestinian problem, which he is expected to bring to Washington when he meets with President Bush in April.
He said it would be a two-stage approach, with the first stage providing self-rule for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The next stage would be “negotiations about the permanent status of the territories, without deciding now what will be the final result of the negotiations.”
Shamir stressed that these arrangements can be worked out with the Palestinians living in the territories.
“The Palestinian civilian population is fully capable of organizing themselves and putting together a delegation to conduct negotiations,” he said.
Shamir said of the Palestinians, “I know we can live with them in peace and work out a formula that will satisfy the security needs of Israel and at the same time their own aspirations.”
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