RAMALLAH, West Bank, 12 January 2008 — As US President George W. Bush concluded a thee-day visit to Israel and Palestinian territories to advance peace talks between two parties, Israeli Minister of Trade and Labor Eli Yishai threatened that his Shas religious party will leave the government “When talks about (the potentiality of dividing) Jerusalem begin.”
Yishai made the statement a day after Bush blatantly intervened in Israel’s interior politics when he asked ministers Thursday evening, during a working meal with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to “take care of Olmert, so he will stay in power.”
Bush praised Olmert is “a strong political leader” three weeks before the Winograd Commission releases its final report on the failures of Israeli government during the July war on Lebanon. Israeli politicians said that the report’s conclusions might put an end to Olmert’ political life.
In his statement yesterday, Yishai joins the camp of the rightist party Israel Beiteinu, whose leader Avigdor Lieberman also threatened to leave the government if issues such as Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees would be put on the table.
While Olmert’s Kadima-led coalition could essentially survive without Israel Beiteinu’s 11 Knesset seats, albeit as a weaker government, his coalition would collapse if both Shas and Israel Beiteinu — jointly holding 23 seats — made good on their threats to leave.
Bush boarded Air Force One from Israeli Ben-Gurion International Airport yesterday afternoon, for Kuwait, the next stop of his eight-day Middle East trip. A departure ceremony was held at the airport, during which Bush told Israeli President Shimon Peres and Olmert “I hope my visit has moved the peace process forward.” He added that “There’s a good chance for peace and I want to help you.”
He told Peres that he accepted his invitation to attend an international convention, which will hold in May to mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Jewish nation.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, however, Bush said that he believed the two sides would sign a peace deal by the end of this year.
“While territory is an issue for both parties to decide, I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous,” he said.
The Hamas movement in control of the Gaza Strip reiterated yesterday that it would not be bound by any peace deal that President Mahmoud Abbas may sign with Israel. “Hamas will not be obligated by a deal that Abu Mazen would sign as he has no mandate to speak in the name of the Palestinian people,” spokesman Ismail Radwan told reporters.
“What’s more, the expected accord does not satisfy the expectations of the Palestinian people.” His comments followed a prediction on Thursday by visiting Bush that the Israelis and the Palestinians could sign a peace treaty to end their decades-old conflict by the end of his term in January 2009.
In Damascus, an official Syrian newspaper said yesterday Bush’s call for the creation of a Palestinian state and an end to Israeli occupation of Arab land was just “hollow words.”
“All that comes from the White House are hollow words ... then the pressure exerted by Washington on Israel amounts to zero,” Ath-Thawra newspaper charged.
“Before and during his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, Bush more than once urged Israel to stop settlement expansion and called for the creation of an independent Palestinian state. These are only beautiful words of peace,” added the paper.
A senior Iranian cleric urged Arab leaders to distance themselves from Bush, who is set to visit Washington’s Arab allies in a trip aimed at isolating Iran.
“We hope some Arab countries have the wisdom not to tie their fate to a pathetic and bankrupt president who will be finished in a year,” hard-line cleric Ahmad Khatami said in his Friday prayers sermon carried live on state radio in Tehran.
Khatami said Bush’s “Iranophobia project” was “a repetitive lie, which will not have an audience as our neighbors know a powerful Iran will be their best friend.”
