OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
Israeli President Shimon Peres has been condemned by anti-settler group Peace Now for his planned visit to the West Bank settlement of "Ariel".
"Yesterday we wrote to Shimon Peres, who fought for peace and was awarded the Nobel peace prize, to ask him not to go today to Ariel," Peace Now head Yariv Oppenheimer told AFP.
In the letter to Peres, Peace Now said the president's visit Ariel "aids the enemies of peace."
"We do not want him to give his blessing to a settlement in the heart of the West Bank that is an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians," he added.
Peres was due to go to the settlement to mark the 30th anniversary of its establishment, 11 years after the 1967 Six-Day War in which Israel occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is one of the thorniest in efforts to achieve a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
In response, the president's office said: "Shimon Peres is president of the entire state of Israel and of all its citizens, and in carrying out his functions he does not intend to take part in political disagreements."
Peres was defense minister during the 1970s, a decade that saw massive expansion of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory.
He later earned a reputation as a dove when he became a driving force behind the Oslo peace accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1993.
Along with Arafat, who died in 2004, and Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister assassinated by a Jewish extremist at a Tel Aviv peace rally in 1995, Peres was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1994.
The Israeli government wants to retain large settlements in the West Bank in the event of a peace accord.
Despite international calls to freeze all settlement activity, Israel in recent months announced major construction projects in annexed east Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank. |
