Livni: Israel must advance peace talks to help Iran deal

“Solving the conflict with the Palestinians would enable a united front with Arab countries against Iran,” Justice Minister says.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni

Israel should take steps to advance the diplomatic process with the Palestinians in order to ensure the best possible deal between the world’s leading countries and Iran, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni suggested at a peace conference in the Knesset on Monday.

Livni pointed out that the six months in which the P5+1 countries will be negotiating a permanent accord with Iranare, not coincidentally, the same period left in the nine months US Secretary of State John Kerry allocated for talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

She said that rather than complain about the interim deal reached with Iran in Geneva, Israel can help get a better deal by doing its part in the peace talks.

“I suggest that we stop whining because of what was signed in Geneva and use the six months to make sure Iran doesn’t fool the world into enabling a final-status deal that would be dangerous for Israel,” said Livni, “and to reach a significant breakthrough on two states for two peoples that will be good for Israel.

“Continuing serious peace talks can allow the Arab world to put its conflict with Israel aside to cooperate on Iran,” she said. “Solving the conflict with the Palestinians would enable a united front with Arab countries against Iran.”

She said that during the next six months, Israel should work to strengthen its strategic alliance with the United States. She also suggested a political bond with the Labor Party on diplomatic issues.

Livni said she was glad new opposition leader Isaac Herzog defeated Labor MK Shelly Yacimovich in the party’s leadership race, because it proved Yacimovich was wrong to abandon the diplomatic issue. The Hatnua Party leader said an ideological alliance with Labor would send a pro-peace message to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, while countering the bond between Yesh Atid and Bayit Yehudi she said was harming Israel by sanctioning West Bank construction and causing friction with the US.

Herzog has spoken about building a Center-Left bloc that could challenge the Likud in the next election. He criticized Netanyahu for sowing unnecessary panic on the Iran issue while burning bridges with the Obama administration.

“Isolation will not benefit the people of Israel,” Herzog said at the conference. “It is imperative and essential that we leave no stone unturned on the path to peace. Right now there is a historic opportunity. The fact is that there is a moment of willingness on the part of the rest of the world, that makes a historic breakthrough for peace possible.”

The conference’s organizer, Labor MK Hilik Bar, who heads the Knesset’s two-state caucus, challenged Netanyahu to make peace.

“I heard Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accuse the Palestinians by saying that ‘there is no Palestinian Ben-Gurion,’” Bar said. “I ask him: Do we have an ‘Israeli Ben- Gurion’ these days, or is there even another Israeli Menachem Begin? Will Netanyahu do as Begin did, and rally the Right and the Left in order to produce a historic peace agreement? Will he be a statesman and a leader or a politician and leader of the narrow Right?”

 

November 28, 2013 | 8 Comments »

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  1. Tzipi Livni Said:

    Israel should take steps to advance the diplomatic process with the Palestinians in order to ensure the best possible deal between the world’s leading countries and Iran, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni suggested at a peace conference in the Knesset on Monday.

    May be she was simply making impractical suggestions to weaken BB in order to get US support for her future political gains at the cost of her country. Is she really serious to make such a dumb suggestions? With whom could Israel negotiate at this time (PLO or Hamas)? Neither option is feasible. I believe she should know better than this. This is not the time in which any party in Israel should play a political game for selfish interest as anti-semitism is growing all over the world. Absent a miracle I donot think the current US Administration will attack Iran.

    It is up to Isareli’s and their friends to save the only Jewish state and even the rest of the world from the fanatic mullahs of Iran.

  2. Livni pointed out that the six months in which the P5+1 countries will be negotiating a permanent accord with Iranare, not coincidentally, the same period left in the nine months US Secretary of State John Kerry allocated for talks between Israel and the Palestinians. She said that rather than complain about the interim deal reached with Iran in Geneva, Israel can help get a better deal by doing its part in the peace talks.

    Livni has the odor of a con artist. She fails to mention how the two are linked and why should giving away eretz yisroel give Israel some sort of “deal” on Iran? I have long written that the 2 were linked going back to the faux pal state. However, the only way I see that the deal is still on the table is if the US posture in Egypt, Iran and Syria are a ruse to guarantee the dem anti-war constituency in the midterm election by distancing himself from the egypt coup and war in Syria and Iran: as the peacemaker and democracy supporter. Granted, it might be a ruse as Egypt immediately had the money from the GCC and SISI was strengthened with anti US credentials; also, assad and hezbullah have been weakened’ furthermore Israel could do it alone or in conjunction with the GCC and with clandestine US support. If it is not a ruse then what she can only mean is that without the pal state and a peace treaty no one will cooperated over Iran, this does not make sense as the GCC want Iran out as much or more than Israel, I don’t think they care about the pals. Maybe it is a ruse or she is a con artist alluding to a dead deal.

  3. What an absurd connection. Our very survival on the Peace Process that does not have a solution because the Islamic solution is incompatible with ours and there is no compromise from the Islamic side.

    Congress should impeach Obama on Iran or be complicit in facilitating the next Holocaust
    http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/congress-should-impeach-obama-on-iran.html

    On November 12, 1936, Winston Churchill said:
    Two things, I confess, have staggered me, after a long Parliamentary experience, in these Debates. The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and have been transforming our position and the whole outlook of the world. Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of Commons to react effectively against those dangers. That, I am bound to say, I never expected. I never would have believed that we should have been allowed to go on getting into this plight, month by month and year by year, and that even the Government’s own confessions of error have produced no concentration of Parliamentary opinion and force capable of lifting our efforts to the level of emergency. I say that unless the House resolves to find out the truth for itself, it will have committed an act of abdication of duty without parallel.

    Senators, Congressmen and Congresswomen should ask themselves – what do we know about Shi’a eschatology, the Mahdi and the Twelvers? Nothing. Did we hold congressional hearings on Iranian motives? No. Have leading western scholars of Islam been consulted? Did we hear their views? No.

    Unless the US Congress resolves to find out the truth for itself, it will, to quote Churchill, have committed an act of abdication of duty without parallel. Ignorance is not an excuse.

  4. “It is imperative and essential that we leave no stone unturned on the path to peace.

    The only stone unturned after 65 years of the “path to peace” is Israel’s tomb stone!

    Herzog has spoken about building a Center-Left bloc that could challenge the Likud in the next election

    There is no Left or Center-Left in Israel to speak of other than that unholy cabal that pulls all the strings of the GOI, the courts and the media.

  5. Livni said she was glad new opposition leader Isaac Herzog defeated Labor MK Shelly Yacimovich in the party’s leadership race, because it proved Yacimovich was wrong to abandon the diplomatic issue. The Hatnua Party leader said an ideological alliance with Labor would send a pro-peace message to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, while countering the bond between Yesh Atid and Bayit Yehudi she said was harming Israel by sanctioning West Bank construction and causing friction with the US.

    Herzog has spoken about building a Center-Left bloc that could challenge the Likud in the next election. He criticized Netanyahu for sowing unnecessary panic on the Iran issue while burning bridges with the Obama administration.

    It is the Obama administration that is causing friction and burning bridges.

    As for the Arab states, it would be in their own self-enlightened interests to cooperate in stopping Iran. They wouldn’t be doing Israel any favors. It’s absurd to say Israel has to make concessions on the “palestinian” issue in order for the Arabs to cooperate on a matter of grave importance to their own survival.

  6. Brainless fool.
    After her complete and utter failure in Lebanon (UN Res 1701) why would anyone take this idiot seriously. It’s a very good thing that I and my comrades didn’t bump into her (and/or Olmert and Peretz) when coming down from there, I’m not sure we could have controlled ourselves.
    She needs to STFU and just…..go away.

  7. @ NormanF:I think that rather than a rabbit in the hat she has a bird brain in her head. In the ideal world the best advice for Israel would be – “Take what Tzippi says and do the opposite”.

  8. Tzipi Livni must really believe peace is possible. Who is lying – her or the PLO negotiators who have repeatedly stated there is no progress.

    More to the point, why on earth should she believe trading up Yitzhar will induce the Americans to bomb Bushehr to smithereens?

    With the Iran deal, that linkage ship has now sailed. Maybe she is trying to make the best of a bad situation but the truth is the Palestinian Arabs are unlikely to meet Israel’s minimum demands for a peace deal.

    Unless she has a rabbit in the hat no one knows about, an Arab change of heart towards Israel sounds far-fetched, indeed.