Lieberman: Israel not bound by Annapolis
Avigdor Lieberman is living up to his promise.Israel Radio's 4:00 pm news reports that at his installation today as foreign minister, Lieberman announced that while Israel is bound by the 'road map,' which was adopted by the cabinet, it is not bound by the 'Annapolis process,' which was not adopted by the cabinet or any other body. Heh. I wonder if he's referring to the 'road map' with or without the Sharon government's fourteen reservations, which were ignored by the Bush administration.
In response to last week's controversy over some nasty remarks he made about Egypt, Lieberman said that he would be happy to visit Egypt on a 'reciprocal basis,' i.e. if President Hosni Mubarak or foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit visit Israel. Don't hold your breaths waiting for that to happen. Mubarak has been here once (for Yitzchak Rabin's funeral) and I don't believe Gheit has ever been here.
Let the fireworks begin....
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:02 PM
4 Comments:
The Palestinians never responded to the previous government's offer of statehood. They said in effect "no." And Israel is not obligated to give them what they want a priori. If they want peace, they are the ones who have to be willing to walk through that door. And so far they keep saying "no" to Israel. Avigdor Lieberman understands them very well, unlike the feckless Tzipi Livni who even now, doesn't appear to understand that a Palestinian "no" really means what it says.
Lieberman is off to an auspicious beginning as Foreign Minister and no one imagined Bibi would be bound by undertakings that never happened and which the other side never fulfilled, now would they? That's a bracing dose of realism to all those who think peace is just waiting around the corner.
Let's wait to see what he does, and not what he says. On the doing side he is not getting off to a good start by his appointment of Weisglass, who was one of the main advisers responsible for the brutal expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif. He has been also been associated with shady deals involving Casinos and PLO gangsters.
Good point, David. Personnel usually is policy and Dov Weisglass may not have grown up from the Oslo/Disengagement days. Still, this kind of blunt talk won't exactly serve to endear Lieberman on the world diplomatic circuit. He is not that good a liar, given the wag that a diplomat is a guy paid to lie for his country.
We'll have to see what the government actually does over the next months before we have any idea of whether there is real change or whether its business as usual on the "peace process" front.
About those fictional "Annapolis Accords" and the slur of "ultranationalist" and "right-wing" perjoratively by the MSM to Avigdor Lieberman and Israel's new government respectively, I can't ever recall Shimon Peres being referred to as an "ultraleftist" and Israel's Labor/Kadima-led governments being referred to in the Western media as "left-wing." If memory serves, you won't ever find an instance of such a characterization. But Israel rightists and nationalists are illegitimate in the eyes of the world, even when they come to power in a free election!
The Zionation blog ran a good post about it that rips the BBC's reporting. Those fascist Zionists, you know, tearing up agreements that never existed!
BBC Invents "Annapolis Accords"
A careful search of the historical record will reveal the Palestinians refused to compromise with Israel to make a Palestinian state possible. But that doesn't matter to a world media bent on painting Israel in the blackest possible terms.
Read it all.
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