Peace talks are 'fantasies'
2007-08-10 11:17
Jerusalem - The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot quoted Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Friday as calling recent peace moves with the Palestinians "fantasies" and saying Israel would not withdraw from the West Bank for another five years at least.
The comments were attributed to Barak in "private conversations". If accurate, they are surprising because Barak heads the dovish Labor Party and tried to reach a dramatic peace deal with the Palestinians seven years ago, when he served as prime minister.
Barak's office would not comment on the Yediot report.
"Israelis have healthy intuition. They can't be fed more fantasies about an upcoming agreement with the Palestinians," Barak is quoted as saying.
Rocket 'response' needed
Israel won't be able to pull out of the West Bank before it develops a technological response to rockets fired by Palestinian militants and more advanced missiles from Iran - a process that will take between three and five years, Barak said, according to the report.
Palestinian militants regularly launch rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip. But if fired from the West Bank, the rockets could threaten the country's population centres and paralyse its only airport outside of Tel Aviv.
The Israeli army will not leave the West Bank "at least in the next five years," Barak is quoted as saying.
Mideast peace moves have been jump-started in the past two months, as Israel and the international community scramble to shore up moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the aftermath of the take-over of Gaza by his rivals from the Islamic group Hamas in mid-June. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been holding regular meetings with Abbas and has ordered the release of Palestinian prisoners and the transfer of frozen Palestinian tax funds in an attempt to bolster him.
Barak is dismissive of Olmert's recent efforts, according to the Yediot report, referring to them as "packaging," and asserting that Abbas is incapable of taking control of the West Bank and providing security there.
No intention to comply
As a result, according to Yediot, Barak does not intend to comply with Palestinian requests to remove checkpoints in the West Bank, saying this would endanger Israeli civilians.
A former army chief of staff who was elected prime minister in 1999, Barak supported major territorial concessions to the Palestinians and tried to sign a peace deal with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in US-brokered talks in 2000. But those talks collapsed, Israeli-Palestinian violence resumed, and Barak was crushed in an election by hard-liner Ariel Sharon a few months later.
Barak regained the leadership of the Labor Party in June, and now serves as defence minister in a coalition government alongside Olmert's Kadima party.
- AP