Cutting a peace deal with the Palestinians is “impossible” right now, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israeli diplomats on Sunday.
No kidding.
Anyone startled by such a statement obviously has been living in a cave since DiMaggio was still wearing pinstripes.
“Even if we offered the Palestinians Tel Aviv” and shrank Israel into the sliver of a sliver it constituted in 1947, “we wouldn’t have a deal,” Lieberman said.
And, of course, he’s correct.
Israel has repeatedly offered the Palestinians the land they demand and the state they dream of — deals slapped away by the crooks and cowards of the Palestinian Authority.
Chances for Mideast peace are now, just as they were at Israel’s founding, sabotaged by Arab intransigence.
Indeed, the Palestinians are now skirting direct talks and trying what Lieberman calls diplomatic war — pushing the United Nations to acclaim an independent Palestine, talks be damned.
And just imagine what that would be like: One Palestinian state . . . on two plots of land . . . with two warring governments . . . one of which is the terrorist organization Hamas.
Worse still, even Hamas’ rivals in the PA are “not legitimate,” said Lieberman.
Technically he’s right again. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas may run the West Bank, but he isn’t the president of anything; his term expired in 2009.
Saying so isn’t diplomatic, so it’s no surprise Lieberman’s outburst has made Israel and the rest of the world uneasy.
That happens from time to time when public figures forget to lie.