Peres voices optimism on Gaza withdrawal
CAMBRIDGE -- Facing a major parliamentary vote next week on a plan for Israelis to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres gave a heartily optimistic assessment of peace prospects last night in a speech at Harvard University's John. F. Kennedy School of Government.
Peres, leader of the Labor party and a former prime minister, most clearly articulated his vision for near-term progress when he was prodded by a Harvard student who identified himself as Palestinian. The student asked how Israel could be sincere about the peace process even as it has expanded settlements during peace talks, and as it builds a barrier around the West Bank.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ''changed his mind very seriously," Peres responded. ''He is father of the settlements, and now he is dismantling them."
Peres was referring to Sharon's disengagement plan, which would dismantle Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, the subject of a vote next week, for which Peres has curtailed his US travel plans.
Peres said Sharon has justified his turnaround by saying that ''the world will do it if we don't." The Labor leader added: ''Once the change will begin, it will go on by the engine of a new age and its own energies.
''As a Jewish person -- for us, occupation is forbidden," he continued. ''You are never born to master another nation . . . when we are making concessions, it is not just because Palestinians are asking for it, but because we are being called by our tradition not to be occupiers."
The 81-year-old politician, architect of the Oslo peace process and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, told an Israeli newspaper this week that he worries someone will try to assassinate Sharon, because virulent verbal attacks on the prime minister are reminiscent of the political climate leading to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Peres was surrounded by heavy security. Cambridge and State Police were stationed outside the Kennedy School; inside, numerous bodyguards were on hand during the more than hourlong talk and question-and-answer session.
Peres once spent a semester studying at Harvard, which he described as one of the happiest times in his life.
When he spoke of his disappointment that the 21st century has not seen an end to bloodshed, he deadpanned, ''The only war of the 21st century should be the confrontation between the Red Sox and the Yankees. Hopefully, the Red Sox will win."
Answering a question about Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Peres said Arafat's major flaw was that he never learned how to transform from the head of a clandestine organization to a statesman. ''Once he told me, 'Democracy -- my God, who invented it? It's so tiring!' "
Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri @globe.com.
