Israel Inside Line: Lieberman's "Enough" Declarations

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Saturday roared at an ambassadors conference held at the Foreign Ministry. Referring to an interview with the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas who had said that unilateral IDF actions, including the killing of the three Palestinians, had caused him to reconsider the current joint security pact; Lieberman said: "We have paid enough. We have made many gestures and received nothing in return."

At the same conference, he implicitly targeted Israel's ambassador to Turkey, Gaby Levy, who has been keeping a low profile not to increase tension between two allies and making efforts to mend ties between them. Lieberman said:

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The era of groveling is over. I have seen several ambassadors whose identification with the countries where they are posted is so great they are constantly trying to justify [to Israel] the other side's point of view. This stance is wrong. There should not be an attitude of groveling and self-effacement.

We will not look for friction and confrontation but we will also not turn the other cheek. For every action there will be a reaction and this is the policy I demand from the ambassadors.

On Sunday morning, Lieberman warned Abbas regarding his statement in the interview. He spoke to Israel Radio:

We've made a series of gestures to Abbas, including [Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's policy speech at] Bar Ilan, the removal of West Bank roadblocks, the settlement construction freeze and allowing him to hold the Fatah conference in Bethlehem. We've made enough gestures.

[And yet] I have heard Abbas recently threatening to end security cooperation with Israel. He's the only one who would lose out from that, both personally and from the point of view of the PA.

Middle East Inside Line: Saudi Arabia's al-Faisal "Israel is Like a Spoiled Child"

On Saturday, after a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Prof. Ahmet Davutoglu, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal criticized Israel, blaming international actors for "spoiling" Israel in the region with their "unjust treatment":

The reason why a solution cannot be reached is the preferential treatment that Israel gets. When other countries violate international law, they get punished, except for Israel. If war crimes are committed, other countries get punished, except Israel.

Israel has become in the international community like a spoiled child. It does what it wants without being questioned or punished.

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Faisal said that Tel Aviv's plan to construct 700 apartments in East Jerusalem is "a source of worry, which we strongly condemn". He asserted that Washington and other players should take a "firm and serious" stand to put an end to Israeli construction on land that Palestinians want for a future state.

The statement is the latest attempted pressure from Al-Faisal, who had also proposed to Barack Obama, before the US President's Cairo speech this spring, that the US should use economic and military assistance to get Israeli concessions. The plan would have altered the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding, promising that Israel would receive $30 billion over 10 years, but Washington had already assured Israel that there would be no cut.

For his part, Davutoglu said that Israel should end the "catastrophe and calamity" in the Gaza Strip and should freeze the building of settlements.