Netanyahu Denies He’s a Stumbling Block in Peace Process

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected claims by Israeli opposition leaders that he is to blame for the long stalemate in peace negotiations, declaring that the peace process was in “dire straits” well before he took office two years ago.

“Negotiations had stopped on virtually every track,” Netanyahu told a group of visiting U.S. members of Congress, apparently trying to halt growing criticism from the opposition Labor Party and Palestinian leaders that his government is responsible for the 14-month deadlock.

Netanyahu said a wave of suicide bombings in Israel and violence in southern Lebanon had all but derailed the process before he came to power in June 1996. His government, he said, has worked since then to achieve a “genuine peace” with the Palestinians, one that would include greater assurances of security for Israel.

But Shimon Peres, the former Labor Party prime minister and an architect of the 1993 Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians, dismissed Netanyahu’s arguments as “baseless stories.”

“For two years, the negotiations have been prolonged without reason,” Peres told Israel Radio, adding, “It’s possible to achieve peace.”

Netanyahu has so far rejected a U.S. proposal to revive the peace process that calls for Israel to hand over an additional 13% of West Bank territory to the Palestinians in exchange for concrete steps to clamp down on militant Islamic groups and the adoption of a new Palestinian national covenant, among other measures.

But he said Sunday that he expects a majority of his coalition government to ultimately support transferring more West Bank land to the Palestinians if Israel’s security can be assured.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, meanwhile, urged the United States to go public with its initiative. Such a move would be widely perceived as ratcheting up the pressure on Israel.

“I am insisting that the American administration has to declare all its initiative and what has happened for this initiative,” he said in the Gaza Strip. Arafat has accepted the proposal.

But Netanyahu garnered strong support for his position from Sunday’s unusual convergence on Jerusalem of four visiting congressional delegations, including one being led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

Gingrich has been openly critical of President Clinton’s attempts to set deadlines for progress in the peace process, echoing Netanyahu’s views that Israel alone must decide its security needs without interference from its closest ally, the United States.

“The reality is that true peace has to be based on true security,” Gingrich said as Netanyahu sat beside him at a news conference.

The congressional visit also coincided with mass celebrations marking the anniversary of Israel’s capture of the eastern sector of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. As thousands watched the biggest military parade in the city in many years, members of the Gingrich delegation wasted no time signaling their approval of Israeli control over Jerusalem. Gephardt called the city a “wonderful, wonderful symbol of openness and democracy.”

The issue of Jerusalem is one of the most explosive on the Israeli-Palestinian agenda. Israel claims all of the city as its capital and says it will never again be divided. The Palestinians claim the eastern sector as the capital of the independent state they hope to establish one day.