Peres: Israel should have backed Palestinian state earlier

ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Israel may have been wrong for not supporting the formation of an independent Palestinian state earlier, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told CNN on Saturday.

"Maybe we were mistaken by not offering straight ahead to the Palestinians an independent state of their own," Peres said in an interview for broadcast on CNN's "Novak, Hunt & Shields." He said Israelis "need the Palestinians to be organized in a state of their own" in order for Israel "to remain a Jewish and a democratic state."

"To my taste, it should happen as soon as possible -- the earlier the better," the former prime minister and Nobel Prize laureate said.

Peres complained that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat "doesn't prevent terror," and said he expected the Palestinian leader to abide by agreements made in Oslo, Norway, in 1993 that committed both sides to working out their differences "by dialogue not by shooting."

"We feel that the weakest point in the Palestinian making is the fact that they have three or four or five dissident armed groups, and each of them is shooting on its own in a different direction, and by doing so destroying any possibility of having a joint agenda," Peres said.

"We demand that the Palestinians establish a single authority over all armed groups. Otherwise we shall not be able to move ahead."

Peres said Israel's strikes against Palestinian targets in the West Bank -- and an expected incursion into Gaza after a deadly suicide bombing at an Israeli coastal city Tuesday -- are preventative rather than retaliatory.

"We are not looking for a plain military victory," he said. "We're looking for an opening for a political one. We don't have in mind to conquer cities. We have in mind to prevent terror."