Israel Analysis: Freezing Out Foreign Minister Lieberman?
Monday, September 20, 2010 at 12:55
Talking to supporters of his party Israel Beiteinu in early September, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman explained why the results from direct Israel-Palestine talks were "unachievable":
It must be understood that signing a comprehensive agreement in which both sides agree to end the conflict and end all of their claims and recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is a goal that is not achievable in the next year or in the next generation, so any historic compromises or painful concessions won’t help.
On Sunday, Lieberman brought his "wise" solution as an alternative to this failure. He said that the main principle for negotiations must not be "land for peace" but "an exchange of territories and populations", ruling out the Palestinian side's insistence on basing the peace talks on the pre-1967 borders. This would guarantee the status of settlements under the Israeli flag and save Israel's "Jewish" identity.
Not all have been converted by the Foreign Minister's wisdom, however.