Itongadol.- It will be impossible to achieve peace between Israel and Palestinians in the foreseeable future and international mediation cannot help resolve the conflict, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday.
“In the 20 years since the [signing of the] Oslo Accords, the situation has only been deteriorating," Lieberman said at the Sderot Conference for Society at Sapir College, where he reiterated his view that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is not a partner for peace.
“Who does Abu Mazen [Abbas] represent?" Lieberman asked. "I still don’t understand that. He doesn’t represent the residents of Gaza. He lost the parliamentary elections to Hamas. The presidential elections have been postponed for three-and-a-half years because he’s afraid of losing.”
Lieberman, who only recently reclaimed his position as foreign minister after being acquitted of fraud and breach-of-trust charges, claimed it was impossible to achieve a permanent settlement between Israel and the Palestinians anytime soon.
“First, we have to achieve security for Israelis and [create an] economy for the Palestinians,” he said. “Only after that can we achieve a political settlement. It won\’t work the other way around.”
The foreign minister also told the conference he does not believe international mediation can break the stalemate between the Israelis and Palestinians. “When will we achieve peace? Not through mediators,” he said. “Not through the Quartet [of Middle East peacemakers] or the UN Security Council. We can talk seriously about a political settlement with the Palestinians when their per capita GNP reaches $10,000 — not a day before that. All other talk is detached from reality.”
According to Lieberman, the conflict with the Palestinians is not over territory. “The claim that painful concessions are necessary and that the settlements are an obstacle – that approach is pure fabrication,” he emphasized. “The people saying this don’t want to accept reality. For example, there was never any territorial or familial connection between Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.”
Renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, began some three months ago, but little progress has been made in the negotiations that are supposed to produce an agreement by the end of April 2014.