THE JERUSALEM POST
By HERB KEINON
08/07/2011 14:58
Israel should cut off all contact with the Palestinian Authority, including security cooperation, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday, adding he intends to recommend this step to the government.
“I am calling for the cutting off of all contact between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” he told reporters.
“And I mean all contact, from discussions relating to water, to discussions between officials in the foreign ministries.”
Lieberman also said it was clear that along with the expected statehood recognition vote at the UN in next month, the PA was planning “the worst violence and spilling of blood that we have ever seen.”
He said he planned to go to the UN for the debate and vote on Palestinian statehood recognition in mid- September.
The foreign minister ridiculed claims by the PA leadership that they were only interested in non-violent protests, saying that if they planned a march of thousands of people to IDF checkpoints, and try to pass through those checkpoints, it was clear there will be violence.
The Palestinians were busy planning the details of the marches, including how to transport people, and which checkpoints to march on, Lieberman said.
“When you are preparing a march of tens of thousands on the checkpoint at A-Ram or Kalandiya [both north of Jerusalem], when you call on the public to go to the checkpoints and passthrough them without being checked, in such large numbers, it is clear that there will be hotheads who will use violence, and it is possible to imagine what will happen, and what impact they are trying to make,” he said.
Lieberman said there was a serious disconnect between what PA leaders were saying in public about trying to prevent violence in September, and intricate plans they were drawing up for massive marches they know will lead to bloodshed.
“The more they talk about not using violence, the more I see preparation for violence,” he said. The ultimate goal of these marches, and the ensuing havoc, was to “drag the international community” into the conflict to impose a solution.
Lieberman said it was clear the Palestinians were not interested in negotiations, believing they could get more if the international community stepped in.
Referring to efforts by the PA to take Israeli soldiers to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, he said it was impossible for the PA to have it both ways, to have security cooperation on one hand, and to plan to take the IDF to The Hague on war crimescharges on the other.
Cutting off ties with the PA was necessary to get across the message that it could not work against Israel on all international fronts without facing any consequences, the foreign minister said. “They have to understand that there is a price,” he said.
Regarding the Turkish demand for an Israeli apology for last year’s Mavi Marmaraincident, Lieberman reiterated his position that he is completely against any type of apology, and that this would send the wrong message to Turkey, the region and the world.
Israel was “100 percent right” in the way it dealt with the Mavi Marmara, even if the results were “tragic,” he said.
