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FM: Arab Spring protests poverty, disproves leftwing ideas

By JPOST.COM STAFF

JUNE 21, 2012 19:31

Addressing the President's conference "Facing Tomorrow," on Thursday Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said that the Arab Spring is a "protest again poverty" and has disproved the leftwing's focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the building of Israeli settlements as the sources of the Middle East's problems.

Liberman said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with the revolts and turmoil taking place in Bahrain, Tunisia, Syria and Egypt.

He also noted that Israel had signed a peace agreement with Jordan despite continuing to build settlements as proof that peace could be made without giving up on the settlement enterprise.

On the flip side, the foreign minister stated that attempts to make peace with people who were not ready had backfired. The major 2005 disengagement from Gaza, according to Liberman, led to 12,000 rockets being fired on Israel by Hamas, including a number of rockets today during the conference.

Rather than signing what he called mere pieces of paper about peace, Liberman stated that Israel should be working with its neighbors on helping them improve their economies and education systems. According to Liberman, only after Israel's neighbors were more stable economically and had vibrant middle classes' could the harder issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict truly be solved.

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