Why aren't you negotiating the final status? Final status means placing the Jerusalem issue in the forefront of the negotiations. Or more accurately, to place the impossibility of reaching an agreement on Jerusalem in the forefront of our contacts with the Palestinians, and to cause the negotiations to crash. One of our most important achievements in the so-called Oslo 1 and Oslo 2 accords was to keep Jerusalem out of the negotiations even as it retains the explicit status of a united city and the capital of Israel. We do not believe that negotiations are a roulette wheel on which you bet the whole kitty. Negotiations can take place step by step, and it is possible to agree on eighty percent of the issues without agreeing on one hundred percent. Eighty percent agreement is clearly preferable to one hundred percent disagreement. We will probably find it easier to live with one unresolved matter than with loose ends everywhere. We went into the negotiations with clear-cut positions: make autonomy a reality, do not rule over another people, prevent the formation of a binational state, do not return to the 1967 frontiers, keep Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and keep it united. We have not retreated from any of these positions. Questions and answers by then-Foreign Minster Shimon Peres, presenting the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles to the Knesset on Oct 23, 1995
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