ISRAELI FM: DISARMING GAZA ‘UNREALISTIC’

Tel Aviv, 14 Dzulqa’dah 1435/9 September 2014 (MINA) – Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday that Israeli insistence on linking the reconstruction of Gaza to the demilitarisation of Hamas is “unrealistic at this point.”

“I welcome the idea of demilitarisation in exchange for rehabilitation, even though not everyone agrees with it, even in the West,” he said during a press brief to Israeli diplomatic correspondents.

“It is not realistic but it is still important to talk about this narrative in order to anchor this demand in the international consciousness,” he added. “No novel political idea gets implemented right away, but if it is repeated often enough, the world will start internalising it,” Middle East Monitor (MEMO) quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting, Tuesday.

Lieberman, in a meeting with the Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende in Jerusalem, said he would discuss the international community’s efforts to help rebuild Gaza, which has been devastated by the 51-day Israeli military offensive.

Meanwhile, following his PM, the extremist Israeli minister drew parallels between the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and ISIS. “Hamas is no less dangerous than ISIS,” he said in the briefing.

He also suggested that Hamas’ top military commander Muhammad Deif is dead. He said: “If until today we have not heard his voice on a tape and we have not seen any sign of life from him, there is room for optimism.”

Regarding the calls to hold early Israeli elections, he said: “New elections are superfluous. The entire Middle East is going through an unprecedented period of turmoil, and no one knows how it is going to end.”

Despite his differences with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, he said that these differences are launched from religion and state issues, not from war and peace or the Palestinian issue.

On Saturday, Israel’s Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, a member of Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party, predicted that he would become Israel’s next prime minister. (T/P002/P3)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)