Itongadol.- In harshest attack on Abbas in two years, foreign minister says the Palestinian leader "consistently rejects peace"; Peres: World should send technology, not money, to Gaza.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has adopted Leon Trotsky\’s "no war, no peace" strategy of trying to wear one\’s opponent down without committing to anything, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Tuesday.
Liberman, speaking at an Independence Day reception for the diplomatic corps at Bet Hanasi, said Abbas learned this policy while studying in Moscow in the 1970s. "This is exactly what he is doing," he claimed.
Liberman, saying he wanted to tear off Abbas\’ mask and "say clearly that he consistently rejects peace," asserted that the diplomatic events on the Israeli-Palestinian track over the last few weeks have show that "there is absolutely no desire on the part of the Palestinians to reach an agreement with Israel." In his toughest public comments about Abbas since 2012, when he called the Palestinian leader a "liar, coward and wimp."
Liberman said that the Palestinian decision last month to apply for acceptance into 15 treaties and conventions, coupled with the Fatah-Hams unity agreement, repeats a "long standing and familiar pattern of behavior by Abbas and the Palestinians. Whenever there is progress and a step forward in negotiations, the Palestinians take two steps back." Liberman said that Abbas\’s application to the international treaties and conventions came just two hours before "everything was ready for the signing of a document that would lead to the continuation of negotiations between us and the Palestinians." Settlements in Judea and Samaria are not the "real problem," Liberman stated.
The real problem is the "reluctance of the Palestinians time after time to pursue peace."