Top Israeli: No Chance Of A Deal

Israel's vice premier on Friday ruled out any chances of reaching an agreement with the Palestinians and said Israel will have to draw its own borders.

Ehud Olmert's comment in a newspaper interview came a week after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would take unilateral steps if peace talks with the Palestinians fail.

Olmert said unilateral steps are necessary because Arabs will soon outnumber Jews in areas under Israeli control, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger. Olmert said Israel would not comply with international demands to withdraw to the 1967 borders. In other words, some West Bank land would be annexed to accommodate Jewish settlements.

"If I believed there was a real chance of reaching a (peace) agreement, I would advise making the effort," Olmert told the Yediot Ahronot daily, "but that is not the situation."

Meanwhile, Palestinian vendors hammered away at the rusty locks sealing their stores Friday as the Israeli military allowed a market in the divided West Bank city of Hebron to open for the first time in more than a year.

The market, overlooked by a heavily guarded Jewish enclave, has been a frequent flashpoint for violence between the 450 settlers and some of the 130,000 Palestinians living in this city, divided into Israeli and Palestinian controlled zones.

Vendors said the market had been closed for 13 months.

According to the army, the shops had been shuttered "to protect the Jewish residents," but they were being allowed to reopen due to "new intelligence estimates and new security procedures."

The market opened with a new feature; an avenue of green poles topped by metal grillwork, designed to prevent Palestinians and settlers from throwing projectiles at each other.

As the talks between 13 Palestinian factions continued in Cairo, Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia expressed optimism that militant groups would agree to halt attacks against Israel.

"I hope that we will succeed to reach a kind of mutual cease-fire with Israel," he said.

A cease-fire last summer collapsed after just two months.

The Israeli government remains unhappy that Secretary of State Colin Powell was meeting Friday in Washington with the Israeli and Palestinian architects of a symbolic peace agreement called the "Geneva Accord."

Israel rarely criticizes its guardian ally the U.S. in public, reports Berger, but Israeli officials say the Geneva negotiators don't represent anyone — Israeli Yossi Beilin was not even re-elected to parliament.

Powell was hosting ex-Justice Minister Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo of the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee.

The Israeli government says it alone has the right to negotiate a peace agreement. Officials say Powell's decision to meet with the Geneva authors is the wrong message at the wrong time.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said in a statement Thursday that "entertaining freelance peace plans" is dangerous and validates terrorism. "No wonder Yasser Arafat likes the thing."

But former President Jimmy Carter and several other international figures have endorsed the Geneva Accords, which were negotiated in Switzerland with Swiss backing.

Olmert, who is considered close to Sharon, said Israel has two choices — either to withdraw to the so-called Green Line, the frontier before the 1967 Middle East war, or an "inclusive unilateral move ... where we define our borders that will in no way be similar to the Green Line."

Sharon and prime ministers before him have said they will not withdraw to the 1967 borders.

The Palestinians and the United States oppose unilateral Israeli moves, saying that a decision on borders should come as a result of a negotiated agreement. The Palestinians want a state in all the areas Israel captured in 1967 — the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Olmert indicated that Israel would withdraw from some isolated settlements, as well as from some of the Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want for a capital.

"I won't define the border," said Olmert, who served as Jerusalem mayor for 10 years. "I will just say that it will be based on a maximization of the number of Jews and a minimization of the number of Arabs inside the State of Israel."

Concerning Jerusalem, Olmert said Israel would have to retain control over east Jerusalem's Old City, where a key holy site revered by both Muslims and Jews — known respectively as the Al Aqsa Mosque compound and the Temple Mount — is located.

Olmert said some Arab neighborhoods close to the downtown area would also stay with Israel, but suggested that outlying Arab neighborhoods could be handed to Palestinian control.

In the area currently under Israel's control, Israel's 1.3 million Arab citizens combined with the 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would soon outnumber Israel's 5.2 million Jews because of their higher birthrate.