Shimon Perez: Still lousy After All these Years

I have spent most of my professional life involved in jobs where the ability to negotiate was a key for success. A crucial thing about negotiation is never show your hand, where you expect the negotiation to end, until you are ready to shake hands on an agreement. Shimon Peres does not know how to negotiate.

Shimon Peres, former 2x Prime Minister by accedent, has decided to announce to the world what he is willing to give up in a future negotiation. There are two problems with his statement. First as described above it is a lousy negotiation tactic. Secondly PERES IS NOT THE PRIME MINISTER (Thank G-d). HE SHOULD KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT!!! Peres does not speak for the government. Yet his comment has been picked up by the news services as if he does. His big senile mouth complicates negotiations.

Peres doesn't even have a big constituency amongst the Israeli electorate. He is like a bad case of bursitis that springs up every couple of years. Even the fact that he was Prime Minister doesn't give him legitimacy. He has twice lead the county despite the fact that the Israeli people had never had enough confidence in Peres to actually elect him.

But Peres continues to open his mouth without any sort of legitimacy. Isn't the an old-aged home for senile old politicians that will take this guy off Israel's hands?

Israel could remove dozens of settlements: Peres

Sat Mar 3, 2007 4:23PM EST

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel could remove dozens of Jewish settlements from the occupied West Bank, Vice Premier Shimon Peres said on Saturday.

"Yes, settlements will be removed -- not all the settlements, and I'm not even sure most of the settlements," Peres told Israel's Channel Two television.

The number of the 121 settlements evacuated could be in the dozens, he said. "I think that a serious effort will be made to do that which we undertook to do which is removing settlements."

Israel quit the Gaza Strip unilaterally in 2005 but shelved plans for West Bank pullouts after last year's Lebanon war. Many Israelis oppose removals for fear of bolstering Hamas, the governing Palestinian Islamist faction.

Asked if the Palestinian government could hold talks with Israel on the settlement evacuations and thus affect their scale and pace, Peres said: "If Hamas is willing to negotiate, recognize Israel and achieve peace, then definitely, yes.

"We will implement it according to actions" by the Palestinian government, said Peres, senior deputy to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Olmert's ability to carry out a major West Bank withdrawal over the objections of pro-settler Israelis is in doubt, given his plummeting popularity since the inconclusive July-August war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerillas.

Palestinians seek a state in the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Hamas, whose military wing helped spearhead a 6-year-old Palestinian revolt with a wave of suicide bombings, insists it will not formally recognize Israel. Hamas's 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

But Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state alongside it.

The Islamist group last month signed a power-sharing deal with the more moderate Fatah faction in the hope of winning Western approval.

A quartet of international mediators has said it awaits word on the diplomatic platform of the planned Hamas-Fatah coalition government, and for now is maintaining a Western aid embargo imposed on the Palestinians after Hamas took power.

Around 268,380 Jewish settlers and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. Israel has said it will keep major West Bank settlement blocs under any final peace accord, a position rejected by Palestinians.