Israeli official calls for assassination of Hamas' leaders
His views don't represent Israeli policy, the prime minister said.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's deputy prime minister said Saturday that Israel should assassinate Hamas' leadership, ignore the moderate Palestinian president and walk away from international peace efforts, the latest in a string of hard-line positions voiced by the newest member of the Cabinet.
The comments by Avigdor Lieberman came as the rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, continued talks on forming a unity government. President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah hopes the coalition deal will enable him to revive peace efforts with Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert brought Lieberman into the government last month to shore up a shaky coalition government weakened by the summer war in Lebanon. The Moldova-born Lieberman enjoys wide support among Israel's large community of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
But since joining the government as minister of strategic affairs, Lieberman's inflammatory statements, such as Saturday's call for Hamas' leaders to be sent to "paradise," have raised fears that peace efforts will be frozen.
Olmert's stance
Olmert has tried to distance himself from Lieberman, saying he remains committed to the U.S.-backed road map peace plan, which envisions an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
"His comments are his own. They don't reflect Israeli policy," Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said Saturday.
Speaking to Israel Radio, Lieberman said he believes the Palestinians are not interested in setting up their own state, but rather in destroying Israel. He said Israel must abandon past peace deals, known as the Oslo accords, and the road map.
"A continuation of Oslo, of the road map ... will lead us to another round of conflict, a much more bloody round, and in the end to an even deeper deadlock, and it threatens our future," he said.
He dismissed Abbas, elected president in 2005, as an ineffective leader who should be ignored, and said Israel must get tougher with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups, particularly their leaders.
"They ... have to disappear, to go to paradise, all of them, and there can't be any compromise," he said.
Israel has killed a series of Hamas leaders in targeted missile strikes in recent years, including the group's founder, but has not targeted members of the Hamas-led government elected 10 months ago.
The leader of the Hamas bloc in the Palestinian parliament, Mushir al-Masri, said any attack on the group's leaders would trigger immediate retaliation. The group has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings over the past six years.
Lieberman's party Yisrael Beiteinu, or "Israel Our Home," has 11 seats in Israel's 120-member parliament and provides a comfortable safety net to Olmert in parliament votes.
But the government expansion has been roundly criticized by Israeli doves and Arab activists, who equated Lieberman with far-right European politicians Joerg Haider and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Lieberman's recent calls to strip Israeli Arabs of citizenship and transfer them to Palestinian jurisdiction drew widespread condemnations.
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