WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM: Israel risks losing support from Arab nations against Iran if it does not make progress in Mideast peace talks with the Palestinians, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday.
Israel’s extreme right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office April 1, has refused to accept the two-state solution for peace in the region and shown little interest in talks with the Palestinians.
Israel also considers Iran its main enemy, and is especially worried about Tehran’s nuclear program, which it fears is aimed at making a nuclear weapon.
“For Israel to get the kind of strong support it’s looking for vis-a-vis Iran, it can’t stay on the sidelines with respect to the Palestinians and the peace efforts,” Clinton told legislators on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee. The two “go hand in hand,” she said.
Arab nations want “very much to support the strongest possible posture toward Iran,” Clinton said. “They believe that Israel’s willingness to re-enter into discussions with the Palestinian Authority strengthens them in being able to deal with Iran,” she said.
President Barack Obama has made clear to Israel he believes that the path to peace lies in already agreed frameworks made in the stalled roadmap plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace and the 2007 Annapolis agreement.
However, Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister of Israel’s new government, said in an interview published yesterday Iran is a key obstacle to resolving the Middle East conflict and spoke out against resuming indirect talks with Syria.
It would be impossible, Lieberman told the English-language Jerusalem Post, “to resolve any problem in our region without resolving the Iranian problem.”
