"Palestinian leaders are now preparing for their elections with great calm and have adopted plans for peace," Sabbah said.

Jerusalem—It is now up to the Israelis to make peace since the Palestinians have “adopted plans for peace,” the top Roman Catholic clergyman in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian areas said in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

In his annual Christmas message delivered at a news conference in the Old City of Jerusalem on Wednesday, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah quoted scriptures saying that God’s message is peace for his people if they “renounce their folly.”

Sabbah, who is Palestinian, has delivered similar messages for the past several years, putting the onus on Israel to make peace with the Palestinians.

“Palestinian leaders are now preparing for their elections with great calm and have adopted plans for peace,” Sabbah said.

“Israeli leaders are invited to do likewise by putting an end to their military interventions and by stopping the construction of the wall, as well as the hunt for the wanted,” he said in reference to measures that Israel says it has taken to defend itself against terrorism.

When asked later what “peace plans” the Palestinians had adopted, Sabbah said that they are “ready to talk.” The Israelis must do the same, he said, but must also offer encouragement to the Palestinians.

“The Israelis are the stronger part. ... If Israel wanted peace now, now Israel can make it. ... Israel can make peace. It has all the conditions of peace in hand,” Sabbah said. “The Palestinians are only just people to receive.”

Sabbah repeated his message that if there was no Israeli “occupation” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, then there would be no violence. As to the terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad that still call for a Palestinian state including all of Israel, he replied: “They can say what they want. ... It’s not the majority of the Palestinians.”

Israeli officials say it’s the other way around and point to the fact that when the Palestinian armed conflict began four years ago, there were no Israeli troops in Palestinian population centers, no roadblocks in the West Bank and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat had been offered his own state in most of the disputed areas, including some provisions for Jerusalem.

Sabbah said that before Arafat died, he was considered an obstacle to peace, but now that he is gone, it would prove whether or not he was the obstacle.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has warned repeatedly that unless the new Palestinian leadership cracks down on terrorism, ends incitement and implements reforms, there will not be any progress on the diplomatic front.

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who is favored to replace Arafat as president of the PA in the Jan. 9 elections, marked the end of the 40-day mourning period for Arafat on Tuesday in Ramallah by declaring the Palestinian commitment to peace.

“We are standing here today to reiterate to the world that we are committed to the choice of just peace, to achieve the rights of our people,” Abbas said.

He added that the Palestinians would continue the struggle “to make [Arafat’s] dream and our dream come true and to have a Palestinian child raise the Palestinian flag on the walls of Jerusalem, the capital of our independent Palestinian state.”

The international community is pinning its hopes on Abbas to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure to pave the way for a revival of the peace process.

Israelis ‘discouraged’ with Abbas

But Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said that Israel is not satisfied with Abbas’ statements.

“We are discouraged. Abu Mazen’s first declaration was divided into two parts,” Shalom said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

“The first part was that he will preserve Arafat’s legacy. For us, that legacy is terrorism,” he said, adding that Israel could understand such comments during the election period.

“The second part was that they would never give up on the right of return. That is unacceptable,” he said.

The right of return refers to the demand that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and millions of their descendants should be allowed to return to homes they fled in land that is now the State of Israel. Such an influx of refugees would destroy the Jewish state, Israelis say.

Shalom said that such pronouncements “create illusions.”

The day after Palestinian elections, Shalom said, Israel would like to see Abbas “take a strategic decision to fight terrorism.”

Nevertheless, Abbas recently made a statement in which he said that he would not do it by force but would “talk to our people and our brothers, and convince them not to carry out their attacks,” Shalom quoted him as saying.

Such a ceasefire agreement between Abbas and Hamas and Islamic Jihad would be a “ticking bomb” used by the terror groups to “rebuild their infrastructure,” he said.

There have been other attempts at “ceasefires,” but they have always degenerated into violence and terrorism.

A senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar, rejected on Monday Abbas’ call to abandon the armed struggle.

Abbas has said that turning the intifadah into an armed conflict was a mistake and called for it to continue without weapons.

Al-Zahar was quoted as saying that he and his allies would “never drop our guns until the end of occupation and until we have secured borders for a Palestinian homeland,” although he said Hamas was ready to cut back on attacks if it was in the interest of the Palestinians.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad want to see a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as all of Israel.