Israel must ‘roll back’

End occupation:

ISRAEL: Israel must begin to “roll back” its occupation of the Palestinian territories to convince Palestinians it wants a peace deal that would give them statehood, the Palestinian prime minister said on Tuesday.

Addressing an audience alongside Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Salam Fayyad said rolling back should start by ending army incursions in the West Bank, where the Palestinians aim to establish their state, along with Gaza.

“Unfortunately those incursions continue,” Fayyad told the Herzliya Conference, which annually attracts prominent figures in the Israeli political and diplomatic establishment. Halting the practice and handing over more security responsibilities to the Palestinians on their land would show that the Israeli occupation is being “rolled back on its way to ending”, Fayyad said. After over 16 years of “peace process” that has yielded little, Palestinians needed to see convincing, concrete signs that new talks would lead to where they want to go.

With peace talks frozen for more than a year, Fayyad’s attendance was the highest-level public encounter between a Palestinian and Israeli official since September, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York under US auspices.

That meeting failed to break the impasse between them and U.S. efforts to broker a resumption of peace talks have yet to yield a breakthrough and a resumption of negotiations. HERZLIYA, Reuters