Palestinian PM nixes Netanyahu plan for Mideast peace

[img:AFP/US GOVT/File – US intelligence image of the remains of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor that was destroyed by an Israeli Uranium at Syria site come from Israeli missiles]

Tue Nov 18, 11:45 am ET

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad rejected proposals by Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu for an economic solution to the Middle East conflict, in comments published on Tuesday.

Fayyad -- a former International Monetary Fund economist who is also finance minister -- said in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz that the conflict was a political one that required a political solution.

"Even though I am an economist by profession and I appreciate the importance of the economy very much, the solution is not to be found in money or in industrial zones," he said.

"I am interested not in redefining the occupation but in ending the occupation."

In recent weeks, Netanyahu, a hawkish former premier who is one of the frontrunners to lead a new government after snap parliamentary elections called for February, has repeatedly advocated what he calls an "economic peace" with the Palestinians.

"We need to make peace from the bottom up, rather than the top down, by improving the lives of Palestinians so that they have a stake in peace," he told an umbrella group of North American Jewish associations on Sunday.

"We intend to do this by initiating large-scale infrastructure projects, bringing jobs closer to the Palestinian population centres, to their cities and towns, in cooperation with our Palestinian counterparts," he told the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly.

Opinion polls put Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party neck-and-neck with the centrist Kadima party of his main rival Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who has been leading the peace negotiations with the Palestinians relaunched late last year.

Fayyad "implied that the Palestinian Authority could apply to the International Court of Justice" to put pressure on Israel to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, Haaretz said.

The Palestinians made a similar appeal to the Hague-based tribunal over the separation barrier they dub the apartheid wall which Israel is building the length of the West Bank.

The court issued a non-binding resolution in 2004 calling for parts of the barrier that have been built inside the West Bank to be torn down and for a halt to construction there.

Fayyad said that the pace of construction in the settlements has picked up since the US-hosted conference in November last year that relaunched peace negotiations between the two sides, despite Israel's obligation under the terms set by the meeting to halt the building.

He praised Britain's move to tighten restrictions on the import of goods from the settlements and expressed amazement that instead of working towards halting their expansion, Livni had protested to her counterpart David Miliband on Sunday about the British decision.