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Two prominent Israeli and Palestinian figures launch peace plan
TEL AVIV (AFP) -
Two leading Israeli and Palestinian figures officially launched a peace initiative aimed at collecting as many signatures as possible in a bid to force leaders on both sides to make compromises.
"The People's Voice", the project was initiated by former chief of the Shin Beth internal security services Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh, a respected Palestinian intellectual who heads the Al-Qods University in Jerusalem.
Both of them are moderates who have been almost marginalised within their own camps. They signed in July 2002 a "Statement of Principles" based on the vision of two states living side-by-side, as is the so-called roadmap for peace.
But the document presented by the two men is more far-reaching than the blueprint currently being discussed as it does not focus on rekindling negotiations, but rather on determining their outcome.
The text calls for an Israeli withdrawal from all territories occupied during the June 1967 war "with the possibility to exchange territories", and division fod Jerusalem, whose Arab neighbourhoods would come under Palestinian sovereignty.
The plan also stipulates that the 3.7 million Palestinian refugees could only return to a future Palestinian state and not to towns and villages inside Israel.
During a joint press conference in Tel Aviv, Nusseibeh and Ayalon said the plan was aimed at supporting and complementing the roadmap, which calls for the creation of an independent Palestinian state by 2005.
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