- JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected Arab claims to land under Israeli
occupation in an interview broadcast on Saturday, but said he still believed
Jews and Arabs could coexist in peace.
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- "The rights to the land of Israel are Jewish exclusively,"
Sharon told Israel's Channel One television, referring to the state of
Israel and territories it captured in the 1967 Middle East war. "But
all living there are entitled to rights."
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- The right-wing leader of Israel's coalition government
spoke ahead of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, on Sunday, as well
as the second anniversary of a Palestinian uprising for independence.
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- A former general, Sharon was elected prime minister in
February 2001 on his pledge to get tough on Palestinian violence, which
has claimed some 600 Israeli lives.
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- Almost three times as many Palestinians -- many of them
non-combatants -- have died in Israel's military countermeasures, drawing
charges of collective punishment.
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- Sharon defended the army's conduct in what he has often
described as a war against terror and for Israel's survival, but stopped
short of claiming -- as others have -- that the Jewish state abides by
the rules of war prescribed by the Bible.
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- "I have never used the (biblical) phrase 'purity
of arms'. There is no such thing," said Sharon, who is widely reviled
in the Arab world for his hawkishness. "But has the Israeli army made
its objective to target civilians? Never."
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- Sharon holds by his Likud party's stand that the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel took from Jordan and Egypt in 1967, are
historic Jewish land destined for Israeli sovereignty.
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- Palestinians who want the territories for their own state
therefore despair of negotiating with him. Their current uprising erupted
in September 2000, after talks on Israel ceding land to Palestinian control
as part of a peace deal stalled.
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- But the 74-year-old Sharon, a native of what was then
British Palestine, still speaks of peaceful coexistence.
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- "I believe it is possible to live with the Arabs.
When I think back to my childhood, I do not remember a time when I did
not think we could live with the Arabs," he said.
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- Asked about his plans for Yom Kippur, the portly Sharon
said he would fast as required by religious tradition.
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- "I am first a Jew, then an Israeli, and then a member
of the circle of humanity," he said.
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