Associated Press
Jerusalem – In unusually frank comments, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned in a published interview Thursday that “the state of Israel is finished” if a Palestinian state is not created, saying the alternative is a South African-style apartheid struggle.
The explosive reference to apartheid came as Olmert returned from a high profile peace conference in the U.S., hoping to prepare a skeptical nation for difficult negotiations with the Palestinians.
Just hours after his return, the Israeli leader received an important boost when police recommended that prosecutors drop an investigation into whether Olmert illegally intervened in the government’s sale of a bank two years ago. The threat of indictment in the case cast a cloud over Olmert for months.
While Olmert has long said that the region’s demography is working against Israel, the comments published in the Haaretz daily were among his strongest. Israeli officials have long rejected any comparison to the racist system once in place in South Africa.
Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed this week at a summit in Annapolis, Maryland, to resume peace talks with the Palestinians after a seven-year freeze. The two leaders pledged efforts to reach an agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of next year.
In the interview, Olmert said it is a vital Israeli interest to create a Palestinian state due to the growing Arab population in the area.
“The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights,” Olmert told Haaretz. “As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”
the interview was published on the 60th anniversary of the historic U.N. decision to partition Palestine, setting up separate Jewish and Arab states. The vote led to a war, and the Palestinian state was not created.
The Palestinians want to form their state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and east Jerusalem – areas Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
Jews are a solid majority inside Israel, comprising roughly 80 percent of the population of 7 million. However, if the West Bank and Gaza are included, Arabs already make up nearly half the population.
To ensure that Israel can maintain its character as a democracy with a solid Jewish majority, Olmert supports a withdrawal from much of the West Bank and parts of east Jerusalem, following Israel’s pullout from Gaza in 2005.
Gazans complained Thursday that they are running out of fuel, blaming an Israeli decision to cut back on fuel supplies. However, the private Israeli company that sells fuel to Gaza said the problem was that Gaza isn’t paying its bills – an issue that repeats itself every few months and is usually resolved quickly.
Israel’s 1.5 million Arab citizens have the right to vote, but the estimated 3.9 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza do not have Israeli citizenship or rights.
Olmert, a hard-liner earlier in his career, in recent years has repeatedly warned that Israel cannot remain both Jewish and democratic if it holds on to the West Bank and Gaza. But he has never used the South African analogy in public, though officials say he recently made the same argument in a closed meeting with lawmakers.
In an important boost, police said there was insufficient evidence to indict Olmert in one of those investigations – whether he illegally intervened in the government’s sale of a bank two years ago. Olmert had been suspected of trying to rig the privatization of Bank Leumi in favor of two associates while he was finance minister.
The decision, coming after months of investigations, including two interrogations of Olmert himself, was forwarded to the attorney general, who makes the final decision on whether to indict. That decision is weeks or months away, but an indictment appears unlikely.
Police are still conducting two other corruption probes against Olmert, who has denied any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, two polls published in Israeli newspapers Thursday showed the Israeli public to be highly skeptical of the fledgling peace process.
The polls, conducted by the Dahaf Institute and Dialog agency, found that fewer than one in five Israelis believe the Annapolis conference was a success, and more than 80 percent of the public thinks the Israeli and Palestinian leaders will not meet their goal of reaching a deal in 2008.
The polls each questioned about 500 people and had margins of error of 4.5 percentage points.
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