FORMER Israeli prime minister Mr Shimon Peres yesterday attacked plans to build a Jewish settlement in Arab East Jerusalem. "I think it is a mistake," Mr Peres told a news conference in Seoul during a private visit to the South Korean capital.
"We have the right to build in Jerusalem but we don't have the obligation to be foolish."
Mr Peres, who heads the opposition Labour Party, said a "national unity" government in Israel might be able to advance peace.
"The purpose is not government, the purpose is peace," he said. "Maybe a national unity government can really serve the purpose and advance the peace process." Meanwhile, Washington's Middle East envoy, Mr Dennis Ross, met the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, in Rabat yesterday. But he has failed thus far to extract the unequivocal public condemnation of terrorism that Israel has been demanding from Mr Arafat as a condition for any further peace progress. Instead, Mr Arafat repeated that he regarded the settlement-building policies as responsible for the past eight days of intifada-style clashes in the West Bank and last Friday's Hamas suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
Mr Ross travelled on for talks in Israel, where the Israeli President,
Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, is showing no inclination to call off the bulldozers clearing land for Jewish housing in East Jerusalem, and is now explicitly accusing Mr Arafat of having reverted to the use of "terrorism as a weapon of political coercion".
. A Jordanian soldier who killed seven Israeli schoolgirls harboured deep anti-Israeli feelings but opened fire "on the spur of the moment" because the girls mocked him while he prayed, his lawyer said yesterday.
"I heard laughter and jeers and girls mocking me when I ended my prayers ... I was outraged by one girl taking pictures and other girls laughing at me." Jordanian Sgt Ahmed al-Daqamsa was quoted by his lawyer, Mr Ahmad Najdawi, as saying.
Mr Najdawi is the first lawyer allowed to see Sgt Daqamsa since he fired his rifle on March 13th at the girls on a school trip to Baqoura.