Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi stormed out of a cabinet session Sunday after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refused to allow discussion on Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' meeting Friday night with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Lisbon, reported Haaretz newspaper.
The far-right minister, who has called on his party colleagues to vote in favor of leaving the government, said he was "not prepared to sit in a government" in which only what Peres had to say was reported.
Ze'evi added, however, that he would act in accordance with the decisions of his party colleagues.
Ze'evi, who said he was not prepared to sit in a government in which he did not even have "a gram" of influence, derisively described Peres' handshake with Arafat as that of "a man who has not seen his brother for a long time," according to the paper.
Peres, he added, was "playing into Arafat's hands," and was "paving the way for Arafat's arrival in the White House."
Also, Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau accused Peres of "pushing a policy that indirectly justifies Arafat's continued terrorism," military radio reported, cited by AFP.
But Peres shrugged off the criticism as "hysterical reactions."
"There's no reason for the Israeli foreign minister not to meet Yasser Arafat while every other foreign minister, including from the United States, is meeting with him," Peres told public radio.
"I took the opportunity to tell him things very clearly, particularly the need to make a 100 percent effort to stop the violence, which he has not been doing," he said.
Since the outbreak of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict last September, CNN reports that Palestinians have killed over 112 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to CNN, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and over 458 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to Amnesty International, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children.
In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded, and over 520 killed.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
