Israeli Sovereignty Pledged Netanyahu Offers Peace - With Jerusalem Rule

On the 30th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War’s opening volleys, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday outlined his vision of a permanent peace settlement with Palestinians that would keep all of Jerusalem united under Israeli sovereignty.

As tens of thousands of Israelis celebrated “Jerusalem Day,” Netanyahu briefed his inner Security Cabinet for the first time on his blueprint for the future - one that brushes aside key Palestinian demands and calls for Israel to hold on to large parts of the occupied West Bank.

Senior aides to Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat assailed the plan as a decision to suppress and dominate Palestinians living in disputed East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians as their capital.

Addressing the Knesset on the day Israelis commemorate their triumph and honor those killed in the 1967 war, Netanyahu declared, “The main meaning of this victory is that Jerusalem will remain united and whole under Israeli sovereignty for eternity.”

The new leader of Israel’s main opposition Labor Party, former Army Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, marked the occasion by praying at the graveside of his mentor, assassinated Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Barak, Israel’s most decorated soldier, was elected chairman of the Labor Party by just over 50 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s election, according to final returns, pitting the former tank commander against Netanyahu in the next elections, scheduled to be held by 2000.

Barak said he would push for early elections, perhaps as soon as 1998, to oust the Likud prime minister, a man he once commanded in an elite army unit.

After Israel’s 1948 war of independence, Israel held only West Jerusalem as its capital. Battle-hardened Israeli soldiers who stormed the Old City on June 7, 1967, two days into the Six-Day War, wept tears of joy when they took control of the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine and the retaining wall of its ancient temple.

Under the 1993 Oslo agreements, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed to negotiate the final status of Jerusalem, Jewish settlements, Palestinian refugees and borders by May 1999.

But Arafat, the Palestinian president, walked out of the peace talks after Netanyahu’s Cabinet ordered bulldozers to break ground March 18 on 6,500 units of Jewish housing in East Jerusalem.