home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=89TT1212>
- <title>
- May 08, 1989: World Notes:Middle East
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- May 08, 1989 Fusion Or Illusion?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 48
- World Notes
- MIDDLE EAST
- A Question of Rejection
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir proposed limited
- elections in the Palestinian territories as a step toward
- Middle East peace. That is not how the Palestinians there regard
- it. Last week more than 80 leaders from the West Bank and Gaza
- issued a statement rejecting the proposal as "a maneuver for the
- media" designed to sidestep the Palestine Liberation
- Organization and "ignore our political legitimacy as well as our
- legitimate aspirations."
- </p>
- <p> Elections would be acceptable, they said, only as part of
- a defined process leading toward Palestinian independence. The
- statement was also intended to remind exiled P.L.O. leaders,
- who had avoided an outright rejection of the Shamir plan in
- their dialogue with the U.S., not to squelch the uprising
- without exacting major concessions from Israel.
- </p>
- <p> The U.S. downplayed the diplomatic damage by maintaining
- that the Shamir proposal remained "very much alive." But some
- hard-liners in Israel have rejected the election plan.
- Administration sources say the negative positions taken by the
- Palestinians and some Israelis are just part of a bargaining
- process that could yet make elections possible as part of a
- comprehensive solution.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-