Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has given his first interview to an Israeli newspaper. After telling a Russian paper earlier this week that, “Believe me, America accepts all our decisions“, his latest thoughts are equally likely to get the vast majority of the world off-side:
The international community has to “stop speaking in slogans” if it really wants to help the new Israeli government work toward a solution to the Palestinian conflict and help bring stability to the Middle East, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, in his first interview with an Israeli newspaper since taking the job.
“Over the last two weeks I’ve had many conversations with my colleagues around the world,” he said. “Just today, I saw the political adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Chinese foreign minister and the Czech prime minister. And everybody, you know, speaks with you like you’re in a campaign: Occupation, settlements, settlers…”
Slogans like these, and others Lieberman cited, such as “land for peace” and “two-state solution,” were both overly simplistic and ignored the root causes of the ongoing conflict, he said.
The fact was, said the Israel Beiteinu leader, that the Palestinian issue was “deadlocked” despite the best efforts of a series of dovish Israeli governments. “Israel has proved its good intentions, our desire for peace,” he said.
Yes, all those good intentions.
Tension with Obama seems guaranteed, BUT, will the US actually demand the Jewish state end the occupation (though, of course, Netanyahu regards these illegal colonies as merely “disputed”).