Ahead of the anticipated imminent launch of indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has accused the Palestinians of hypocrisy and inflexibility, castigated the international community for failing to effectively counter such intransigence, and warned that Israel will not compromise its vital interests and “become another Czechoslovakia.”
In an opinion piece submitted exclusively to The Jerusalem Post that will appear in Friday’s paper, Lieberman charges that both the Palestinians and the Syrians “reject every gesture and demand ever more concessions.”
The foreign minister slams the Palestinian Authority for continuing “to glorify murder by dedicating public squares and streets in memory of terrorists responsible for the killing of hundreds of innocent people including foreign nationals.”
He lambastes those parts of the international community that have joined the “constant attacks on Israel’s right to self-defense against murderous terror.”
And he argues that such a climate “reveals to our neighbors the zero cost of their actions and enables them to become ever more extreme and violent.”
The Netanyahu government in which he serves had hoped for a rapid resumption of direct talks with the Palestinians after taking office last year, but is now apparently set to enter indirect “proximity talks” in the very near future, after months of intensive American diplomatic effort.
In his op-ed, Lieberman stresses that “real peace cannot be legislated or imposed from the outside” but “can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties while developing mutual trust between them.”
He says that Israel is “prepared to pay a high price for peace with its neighbors,” but the Nokdim resident argues that the settlements have never been an obstacle to peace. “On the contrary, the unilateral disengagement from Gush Katif, in which thousands of Jews were evacuated and dozens of communities were destroyed, only yielded increasing Kassam rockets and an extremist Hamas government.”
Israel, Lieberman declares, “will not become another Czechoslovakia and will not succumb to international pressure to compromise its vital interests.”
(The foreign minister’s article will appear in full in Friday’s FrontLines section of the Post.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=174226
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