Shamir Rejects Proposal to Annex Occupied Lands

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir today rejected a proposal by right-wing groups that Israel annex the occupied territories now that Jordan has cut administrative ties to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Shamir said in an interview with Israel’s armed forces radio that the status of the territories, which are home to 1.5 million Palestinians, should be subject to peace negotiations with Palestinians who don’t belong to or identify with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“We honor our international obligations and we shall not make any unilateral step, like imposing Israeli rule on the territories that are subject to negotiations,” Shamir said.

Camp David Accords

He was referring to the 1978 U.S.-negotiated Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, which call for five years of autonomy for Palestinians before negotiations on the final status of land captured from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war.

Shamir has been under pressure from his own Likud bloc and allied right-wing parties to extend Israeli law to the West Bank and Gaza, which the right wing considers an integral part of the ancient land of Israel.

Many Palestinians oppose any solution short of an independent state and have demanded that any settlement be negotiated with Yasser Arafat’s PLO.

Claims Abandoned

Last week, King Hussein abandoned any Jordanian claims to the West Bank, challenging the PLO to set up a Palestinian state in the occupied lands, where it has been leading an 8-month-old uprising.

Arafat’s top aides disagreed over the move, with one calling it a violation of Arab trust.

“Jordan was committed by Arab summit resolutions to certain obligations toward the West Bank until the land is liberated,” Khaled Hassan said in an interview published today in the Saudi Arabian newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat.

Hassan is a member of the central committee of Fatah, the leadership of the main guerrilla group under the PLO umbrella.

But the al-Bayan newspaper of neighboring Dubai quoted Arafat’s right-hand man in Fatah, Salah Khalaf, as saying the “courageous decision” allows the PLO to “shoulder its responsibility and take over new political rights.”

Arafat has expressed anger that Hussein did not consult the PLO before cutting ties. But a spokesman for the rival Fatah-Uprising said Hussein and Arafat conferred the day before the decision was announced.