Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned Sunday that Israel risked being increasingly isolated on the international scene if it failed to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
"We should be aware that should an agreement not be achieved and we slide, heaven forbid, towards a deterioration, cracks will appear in the other peace agreements and Israel's isolation against this background of violence, will increase," Barak told a cabinet meeting, according to a statement from his office.
He was speaking after five days of inconclusive US-hosted talks aimed at hammering out a peace agreement and ending a wave of bloodshed in the region that has claimed the lives of more than 350 people.
Barak, who faces right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon in a special election for prime minister in February, said the political situation in Israel would not change the government's "supreme obligation."
"We will never concede on our vital interests. At the same time, we must examine every idea worthy of consideration, even if it is painful," he said.
Barak also warned that if progress towards a solution was suspended for five to 10 years: "There is a risk that we would then face, an entirely new Middle East, vis-a-vis non-conventional weapons, fundamentalism and a surge in organized terrorism."
US President Bill Clinton has given Israel and the Palestinians until Wednesday to deliver their response to his bridging proposals on some of the thorniest issues at the heart of their half-century conflict.
Israeli press reports said the Clinton plan involved Israel turning over control of Arab neighborhoods of occupied east Jerusalem to the Palestinians along with the al-Aqsa mosque compound, known to Jews as Temple Mount.
The Palestinians would in return waive the right of return for refugees and most would be settled in the countries where they now reside with only a small number allowed to return to Israel.
In addition, Israel would withdraw from 95 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip, territories occupied by the Jewish state in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war along with east Jerusalem, the reports said.
Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, who was in Washington for the talks, told a press conference that Clinton had proposed guarantees for any accord including the deployment of an international force -- JERUSALEM (AFP)
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