Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, formerly a chief negotiator for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, addresses the rumors that PA President Mahmoud Abbas will turn to the UN to set a deadline for Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders and make way for a Palestinian state.
“He [Abbas] needs to understand that a Palestinian state will not come from the UN organizations. What can be obtained for the Palestinian nation, can be secured in the negotiating room,” she tells the Walla news website.
Livni calls for a “comprehensive political process,” and maintains that Abbas’s bid “raises the need for diplomatic negotiations” to reach a peace accord.
“The Palestinian nation very much loves resistance, so Abbas joined in — I assume he will try to make political moves,” she says.
Justice Minister and chief negotiator Tzipi Livni (second from left), Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat (second from right), Yitzhak Molcho, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and Mohammed Shtayyeh, aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (right) at an Iftar dinner at the State Department in Washington, July 29, 2013. (photo credit: AP/Charles Dharapak)
Livni added that with regard to the current Cairo-brokered ceasefire, a truce that sees no lasting change is less than ideal.
“I opposed [Hamas] receiving a seaport and airport as a result of the attacks,” she says.
While Israel has no problem providing humanitarian aid and bettering the economic lives of Gaza’s residents, it wants to ensure that imported materials do not aid terror, she says. “Not money, not cement.”
“A ceasefire for some allotted period — if it has no change — from my perspective, is less good,” she says.
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