World

Report: Ex-Israeli PM Doubts Peace Process

August 10, 2007 / 5:49 AM EDT / CBS/AP

The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot quoted Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Friday as calling recent peace moves with the Palestinians "fantasies" and saying Israel would not withdraw from the West Bank for at least five more years.

The comments were attributed to Barak in "private conversations."

If accurate, it's a surprising comment because Barak was once one of Israel's top moderate "dove" politicians, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger. As prime minister seven years ago he offered the late Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state.

Arafat rejected the deal, and Barak believes the current Palestinian leadership cannot deliver on peace, reports Berger.

Ronen Moshe, a spokesman for Barak, called the report "baseless," saying Yediot's report made Barak's views seem far more extreme than they were.

"The defense minister remains committed to the diplomatic process, although his first commitment is to the security of Israel's citizens," Moshe said.

The Yediot report quoted Barak as saying, "Israelis have healthy intuition. They can't be fed more fantasies about an upcoming agreement with the Palestinians."

Israel won't be able to pull out of the West Bank before it develops a technological response to rockets fired by Palestinian militants and more advanced missiles from Iran — a process that will take between three and five years, Barak said, according to the report.

Palestinian militants regularly launch rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip. But if fired from the West Bank, the rockets could threaten the country's population centers and paralyze its only airport outside of Tel Aviv.

The Israeli army will not leave the West Bank "at least in the next five years," Barak is quoted as saying.

During his brief tenure as prime minister, Barak offered unprecedented territorial concessions to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in U.S.-brokered talks that broke down after Israeli-Palestinian violence resumed in 2000.

Barak, who was voted out of office over his discredited peace moves, hopes to become prime minister again. His comments as reported in Yediot, if accurate, might mark an attempt to woo voters by positioning himself further to the right as peacemaking efforts gain momentum.

Peace moves have been driven by Israeli and international attempts to shore up moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas against Islamic Hamas militants who took over the Gaza Strip in June.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been holding regular meetings with Abbas and has ordered the release of Palestinian prisoners and the transfer of frozen Palestinian tax funds in an attempt to bolster him.

Barak is dismissive of Olmert's recent efforts, according to Yediot, referring to them as "packaging," and asserting that Abbas is incapable of taking control of the West Bank and providing security there.

As a result, according to Yediot, Barak does not intend to comply with Palestinian requests to remove checkpoints in the West Bank, saying this would endanger Israeli civilians.

Palestinian officials weren't immediately available for comment on the newspaper report.

In other developments:

A Palestinian man was killed in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday morning after he tried to wrest a weapon away from an Israeli security guard, Israeli police said. Rescue teams reported that four other people were seriously hurt, and four others were slightly injured. Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco said that after the man tried to steal the guard's weapon, another guard shot him. The guard's gunfire also apparently hit bystanders, Franco told Israel Radio.

Almost two months after the Palestinian civil war in the Gaza Strip, the economic situation there is deteriorating, reports Berger. U.N. officials warn that Gaza will soon become entirely dependent on foreign aid if it remains sealed off. Israel's border has been mostly closed since the Gaza war, after the cargo crossings were attacked by Palestinian militants. Separately, the Association of Palestinian Businessmen reported losses of $23 million dollars to industry in Gaza since the Hamas takeover. It warned that 120,000 Palestinians could lose their jobs.