JERUSALEM/GAZA: ISRAELI PRESIDENT EZER WEIZMAN SAYS HE WILL INVITE THE PALESTINIAN LEADER YASSER ARAFAT TO HIS HOME

Record ID: 399821

  • Title: JERUSALEM/GAZA: ISRAELI PRESIDENT EZER WEIZMAN SAYS HE WILL INVITE THE PALESTINIAN LEADER YASSER ARAFAT TO HIS HOME
  • Date: 22nd August 1996
  • Summary: JERUSALEM/ GAZA CITY AND BEIT HANOUN, GAZA (AUGUST 22 AND 25, 1996) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) JERUSALEM (AUGUST 25, 1996) 1. LV EXTERIOR OF HOUSE 0.05 2. SV ISRAELI PRESIDENT EZER WEIZMAN AND PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU AT MICROPHONE AND WEIZMAN SPEAKING (ENGLISH) 0.37 3. SV REPORTERS 0.41 4. MCU NETANYAHU SPEAKING (ENGLISH
  • Embargoed: 6th September 1996 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JERUSALEM/GAZA CITY AND BEIT HANOUN, GAZA STRIP
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Reuters ID: LVA45HY6ZLH6IFJVRYST71TS2S03
  • Story Text: INTRO: Israeli President Ezer Weizman, answering a "distress" call from Yasser Arafat, has said he would invite the Palestinian leader to his home but set no date.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------- Weizman made the announcement on Sunday (August 25) at a news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    "After an exchange of opinions, we agreed that the meeting would be held -- no date was set -- in my house, which is the most appropriate place," Weizman said after consulting with Netanyahu at the president's Jerusalem office.

    Israel Radio reported the meeting in the central Israeli village of Caesarea would take place within two weeks.

    Weizman said Arafat had sent him a letter "in which he spelled out his troubles and problems and said 'I hope we will meet soon"'.

    "After the letter was translated to Hebrew, I invited the prime minister to see me last Tuesday. I showed him the letter. He read it carefully. Afterwards I told him, 'Look, I want to agree to his request and meet him and I propose I do so in (my private residence) in Caesarea," Weizman said.

    The Yedioth Ahronoth daily said the president had given Netanyahu until Sunday morning to agree either to meet Arafat himself or give Weizman the green light to issue an invitation.

    Netanyahu, who opposes the principle of exchanging occupied land for peace -- the bedrock of the former Labour government's peace deals with the Palestinians -- has said he has no desire to see Arafat.

    But Weizman said he believed the prime minister would eventually talk to Arafat.

    "I suppose that as times go by and things develop, the prime minister will meet him...at the appropriate date," said Weizman, who as defence minister in the late Menachem Begin's right-wing government helped forge peace with Egypt.

    Weizman has met Arafat once, at the 1994 inauguration of South African President Nelson Mandela.

    "Today he (Arafat) has control over more than two million Palestinians. When a leader like that, who is my neighbour...asks to see me, I think I have to agree," Weizman said.

    Netanyahu's election last May dismayed Palestinians, who in the 1993 deal won limited self-rule on the West Bank and Gaza and a commitment from Israel to negotiate a final peace.

    Palestinian Minister for Local Government Saeb Erekat said he did not think a proper peace process existed. Arafat was trying to approach the United States, Russia and the European Union and even the Israeli president.

    Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres met on Thursday (August 22) in the Gaza Strip.

    Arafat and Peres, main architects of the 1993 PLO-Israel peace deal along with Israel's Yitzhak Rabin who was killed by a right-wing Jew last year, met for about an hour at the Palestinian military coordination headquarters. They said afterwards they were committed to protecting the peace.


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