Text size  Israel's character is it's own business. It is not up
to the Palestinians to define it, Palestinian Authority Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad said Thursday, when asked about Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's demand the Palestinians recognize
Israel as a Jewish state.  "Israel's character is Israel's
business and nobody else's," Fayyad says in an interview with
Haaretz.  "The character of Israel, as the total character that
Israel would like to have, is Israel's own choice. It
characterizes itself in the way that it wishes to characterize
itself. Why raise it now? Why would you want to settle it now
when we haven't settled anything else? Needless to say, however
which way Israel decides to characterize itself as a product of
the political system of Israel, is [up to] Israel. This
condition wasn't mentioned in the Oslo Accords, and I see no
room to set new conditions or preconditions for the
negotiations. Until today all we received in exchange for
recognizing the two-state solution and stopping the ar