Former Labor MK Ramon: No need for Israel to rule East Jerusalem

Kadima MK Haim Ramon on Wednesday said that Israel should no longer control Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem under a permanent peace agreement, after Newsweek reported that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was prepared to make territorial concessions in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

"I don't know any sane person who wants, for example, A-Ram [an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem] to be an inseparable part of Jerusalem, because this is a mistake. It means that Jerusalem would be the non-Jewish and non-Zionist capital of Israel," the former Labor MK who joined Sharon's party told Army Radio on Wednesday.

In the remarks attributed to him by Newsweek, the premier's pollster, Kalman Gayer, said, "Sharon would accept a Palestinian state in Gaza and 90 percent of the West Bank, and a compromise on Jerusalem, in exchange for peace."

In the meantime, Gayer added, Sharon wanted to "lay the contours of an agreement with the Palestinians," by creating a Palestinian state in half the West Bank and implementing confidence-building measures, Newsweek said.

Sharon denied the report, carried by Channel One television on Tuesday night, in a special statement he issued following the broadcast.

The resulting storm in the political sphere refused to abate, despite the denial, as Sharon's political foes to the right leaped on the quotes to prove what they said were his true intentions.

"The cat is out of the bag," Benjamin Netanyahu, the frontrunner in the Likud leadership race, said, Sharon's aides are revealing what he is trying to hide but everyone already knows that Sharon will divide Jerusalem and bring the Palestinians back to the 1967 borders."

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Likud's Limor Livnat and Gideon Sa'ar advised voters to "believe those who speak English rather than the denials in Hebrew... This is proof once again that Kadima's path is the path of the left and of withdrawal."

Sa'ar told Israel Radio on Wednesday that Sharon had asked MK Haim Oron of the left-wing Meretz party to join Kadima.

National Religious Party Chairman Zevulun Orlev declared: "Kalman Gayer says aloud what Sharon says behind closed doors. It is possible that Sharon once again plans to deceive the voters who remember that he said Netzarim's fate was the same as that of Tel Aviv."

Sharon issued a special statement Tuesday night in which he dissociated himself from Gayer's quotes in Newsweek.

"The remarks attributed to Kalman Gayer are in total contradiction to my positions and opinions," Sharon's statement read. "If, indeed, these remarks were made, they were made strictly on Mr. Gayer's initiative, and they are senseless and absurd.

"The entire united Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel forever. The road map is the diplomatic plan that will guide Israel in the years to come, and whosoever says anything different is doing so of his own accord and in total contradiction to my position; and that is how the remarks should be treated," Sharon's statement said.

Sharon's advisers hastened to extinguish the flames. They said Gayer explained he had given the reporter background information, but denied the quotes attributed to him.

There has been tension between Sharon and Gayer since Tzachi Hanegbi announced last week he was joining Kadima, a move that Gayer tried to prevent. The advisers said Tuesday that Gayer was good as a pollster, but he was not part of the prime minister's policy-deciding forum and
that his remarks, "which had anyway been denied, were not important."

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