Liberman calls Mideast conflict ‘clash of civilizations’

What is happening today in the Middle East is a “clash of civilizations between the free world and radical Islam,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman says.

In a meeting with German parliamentarians in Jerusalem, he says that the current conflict in Gaza is just one embodiment of this phenomenon in a long series of clashes between the West and Islamism, as demonstrated by the situation in Libya, Iraq and elsewhere.

This clash of civilizations is “the world’s biggest challenge since World War II,” and that’s why Europe should be committed to supporting Israel, Liberman tells his German guests. “Beyond the moral aspects of the case, Israel is the first line on this front because it represents Western values, and that is why Islamic extremists are fighting us,” he says. Unfortunately, he adds, it seems that not everyone in Europe understand this.

Regarding Gaza, Israel did everything the international community preached for years: it evacuated the settlements there, the foreign minister continues. “But instead of peace and stability we received radical Islam, which attacks Israel from there with missiles and other terrorist activities almost every day since the [2005] disengagement” from Gaza.

“Hamas doesn’t talk about the establishment of a Palestinian state or the two-state solution, but rather of the establishment of one big Islamic state,” he says.

The most important thing for the future is to set up a “control and supervision mechanism” for Gaza, Liberman says. Without providing much detail, he says that such a mechanism would ensure that funds and construction material entering the Strip would be used solely for the construction of civil infrastructure, such as schools and clinics, as opposed to manufacturing rockets or digging new tunnels.

— Raphael Ahren