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."
Then, in a dig at Europe, he added, "time after time there are those who do not want to admit this." The foreign minister said that even after Abbas signed an agreement with Hamas, "an organization which openly seeks the destruction of the very state where we are celebrating independence, some, especially in Europe, continue to blame Israel for the deadlock in negotiations." While rejecting peace, Liberman said Abbas "enjoys his status as the leader of a national liberation movement and travels around the world, spending more time in London, New York and Paris than in Tulkarem and Jenin." Liberman said Israel expected the international community to stand by its commitments and demand that Hamas renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept previously singed agreements before engaging with it.
Monday's meeting in Qatar between Abbas and Hams head Khaled Mashaal, "demonstrate with certainty that Hamas is on its way to controlling the whole Palestinian Authority," he said. He predicted that Hamas would win Palestinian elections wherever they are held, and as a result Abbas – who "brought Hamas to power in Gaza – will also bring them to power in the West Bank.
However, Liberman said, we are determined to prevent "Judea and Samaria from becoming the new Gaza." Liberman also said that there could be no compromise on two other issues: the need for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, and the abandonment of the "so-called Palestinian 'right of return'." Liberman said that while Abbas is demanding a "100 homogenous" Palestinian state -- a Palestinian state that will be "Judenrein, without a single Jew" – he seeks a bi-national state in Israel.
"As many of the Arabs living in Israel identify as Palestinian, it is his intention to create a link between a future Palestinian state with the Palestinians living in Israel in order to undermine it in the future at any time of his choosing," he said.
Regarding a Palestinian "right of return," Liberman said Israel "will not agree to even the return of one person to Israel. Those who talk about a “right of return”, knowingly or not, are talking about the destruction of the State of Israel de-facto. If we allow one refugee to come to Israel, a million will follow after him." Israel seeks peace, Liberman assured the gathered diplomats. "Israel wants an agreement, but we will not be fools."
President Shimon Peres, meanwhile, struck a more upbeat and optimistic chord in his remarks to the diplomatic corps. While there is an interruption in the negotiations, it doesn’t mean that the negotiations will stop, he said. It just means that a solution has to be found.
Together with his concern about the resumption of negotiations, Peres expressed even more apprehensive about the effects of terror on the world. He called on all the nations of the world to come together to fight terrorism, which he said can strike anywhere at any time.
Clos to home, he said he was particularly concerned about the terrorism coming from Gaza. From time to time he said, the United Nations Secretary General calls on Israel to permit building supplies into Gaza, but these supplies are not used for regular construction purposes, but rather to build tunnels from which Israel can be attacked by terrorists from Gaza.
Peres said that Israel was not against Hamas-Fatah unity, as long as the three international conditions for engagement with Gaza were met.
He also suggested that countries that finance Gaza stop sending money and transfer technology instead. “Money can corrupt," he said. "Technology can bring growth.”