"We have lost all elements of a normal country that should defend itself. We only know how to threaten," ex-Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman charged Monday morning.
Knesset Member and Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Lieberman further said in a Voice of Israel radio interview that the government is conducting negotiations with Hamas and Syria on a "make believe basis." We are negotiating with Egypt 'as if' we are not talking with Hamas and 'as if' we are not talking with Syria," Lieberman explained. The government officially does not maintain diplomatic relations with Syria or the Hamas terrorist party but is holding talks with them through third party mediators.
MK Lieberman, who pulled his party out of the government coalition several months ago, added that "no one believes that Hamas will stop smuggling weapons and stop training more terrorists, so why negotiate?"
We have lost all elements of a normal country that should defend itself. We only know how to threaten.
Concerning freeing kidnapped soldiers, he flatly stated that Gilad Shalit, abducted two years ago in a cross-border raid from Gaza, will not be freed in the first stages of any agreement that is reached with Hamas for a "cooling off" period of terrorist attacks and IDF retaliation.
He also stated that Israel should not release terrorists in return for dead bodies. MK Lieberman pointed out that Hizbullah has not given any signs of life of kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev and that the Olmert administration last month freed terrorists in return for parts of dead bodies of soldiers who fell in the Second Lebanon War.
He also had unkind words for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who he said is living a "lie" by stating that Jewish development in Judea and Samaria is undermining negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
"Before 1967 there was a conflict with Arabs," he said. Lieberman was making the point that Judea and Samaria, commonly referred to as the disputed territories, are in fact not the heart of the dispute, since even before they came under Israeli sovereignty in 1967, the Arabs were still waging war against Israel. "This also was true in 1956 and 1948. There is a basic misunderstanding of reality."