(Times of Israel) Stuart Winer - Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon on Monday issued a scathing rebuke against pressure for Israel to pull out of the West Bank without adequate security arrangements. "If the alternative to a European boycott is rockets from Nablus, Jenin and Ramallah on our cities, on our strategic home front, on Ben-Gurion Airport, then...I prefer the European boycott." Ya'alon also castigated Western policies towards the Middle East, which he said were based on "ignorance and unfamiliarity with the Middle East, its demographics and its mentality, its culture...naivete, wishful thinking, patronization and other conceptual mistakes." Ya'alon also cast doubts on Palestinian long-term intentions in the peace process. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has never actually said that signing a peace treaty will bring an end to the conflict, he said. "They are only trying to get what they can and then they will continue," adding that the biggest problem preventing reconciliation is the continued education empathizing with anti-Israel terrorism within Palestinian society.
2013-12-31 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive