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Author
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Topic: Netanyahu Accepts
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Kindgo
Advanced Member
Member # 2
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posted
Seems things have changed....
Sharon's Camp Says Natanyahu's Terms Political Trickery
Sharon camp: Netanyahu's terms for taking FM job are 'trickery'
By Yossi Verter, Nadav Shragai and Aluf Benn, Ha'aretz Correspondents and Ha'aretz Service and Agencies
November 4, 2002
www.haaretzdaily.com
Sources close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday that Benjamin Netanyahu's offer to take over as foreign minister in a narrow, Sharon-led government, was nothing more than "political trickery."
At a one-and-a-half-hour meeting Sunday, former prime minister Netanyahu told Sharon that he agrees in principle to serve as foreign minister, but made his return conditional on, among other things, Sharon calling early elections.
Although an official Sharon statement said that the prime minister was considering Netanyahu's conditions, which "include conditions in the diplomatic and political arenas," there were also harsh words for Netanyahu.
One aide said that the conditions were nothing more than "political trickery," adding that Netanyahu "is purporting to act in the Likud's name, but is actually promoting the demise of the Likud government, instead of helping to stabilize it."
"If we want to call early elections, we don't need Netanyahu," the sources added. "That - we can do by ourselves."
The sources added that Sharon will forge ahead with his efforts to form a narrow coalition, after his top negotiators met Sunday with representatives of the National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu faction.
Netanyahu wants elections
Speaking on Channel Two news, Netanyahu said, "I told [Sharon] that I'll be happy to serve as foreign minister on condition that we go to early elections.
"The right thing is to immediately go to new elections," he added, predicting that Likud would double its current 19 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
A close Netanyahu advisor told Army Radio that "[Netanyahu] returned to the principle he stood by two years ago - that no government can function in this [parliament] or achieve anything."
Gabi Piker said that Netanyahu "suggested that the prime minister accept this principle and go to elections so we have a stronger parliament, a stronger Likud party."
Sharon hosted the former prime minister at his Negev ranch, after two of his most senior aides held their first round of talks with potential members of a re-formed, narrow, right-wing government.
Coalition talks underway
Members of the National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu faction described their meeting with the heads of Sharon's negotiating team, Cabinet Secretary Gideon Sa'ar and Environment Minister Tzahi Hanegbi, as "positive." One source close to faction leader MK Avigdor Lieberman told Army Radio that Lieberman was close to joining the coalition.
The source added that while there had been no talks over which portofolios the National Union amalgam would receive, contacts would be resumed Monday.
Sources close to the talks originally said that there appeared little chance of the rightist faction entering into a narrow coalition without the government altering its guidelines for dealing with the Palestinians. The current guidelines were jointly formulated by Likud and the Labor Party some 20 months ago, when Sharon put together his national unity government.
"We're not setting up a new government - the talks are about broadening it," said Sa'ar. He also said there was no deadline for bringing additional parties into the government.
Insiders say narrow coalition unlikely
Political insiders from both the Likud and Labor Party doubt that Sharon's bid to create a narrow government will bear fruit. Those close to Sharon believe that a right-leaning government would tarnish the prime minister's stature as a statesman, which he cultivated under the unity government. As a result, they believe Sharon should move to arrange early elections now.
After meeting with National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu officials, Sa'ar and Sharon's bureau chief Dov Weisglass are expected to meet later this week with delegates from other parties, including Shinui, Herut and Gesher.
Sharon intends to listen to the terms set by these parties in talks regarding their possible inclusion in a new coalition, sources close to Sharon said Saturday.
However, "one thing must be clear," they said. "Sharon is not considering the possibility of altering the government's policy guidelines. Nor does he have any intention of opening up the budget framework and surrendering to the sectarian demands of various parties" in order to get their support for the budget's second and third Knesset readings.
Top Likud politicians said Saturday night that current contacts regarding a narrow coalition are designed mainly to prevent the collapse of the government in Monday's three no-confidence votes submitted by Meretz, Shinui, Hadash and the Arab parties.
Sharon is simply trying to "kill time" for a week or two, before announcing a decision to stage early elections, the Likud sources said.
"In his second and final term, Sharon intends to attain peace with the Palestinians, and this will include a Palestinian state," they said. "Even were it to be for a short time, his leadership of a narrow government would damage him and also hurt the national interest."
Sharon has declared that he wants to avoid early elections on the grounds that the "time is not right for them." He has said that he wants to establish a "functioning government" that would survive until October 28, 2003 - the scheduled date for the next elections.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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Robby
Advanced Member
Member # 448
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posted
Since Netanyahu took the Foreign Minister position, I figured I should post a speech he intended to give at a college in Montreal on Sept. 12, 2002. Because of rioting by Arab protesters, Netanayu's speech was cancelled for safety concerns.
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There is only one way to establish
a humane Middle East
By Binyamin Netanyahu
http://www.jewishworldreview.com
I have come here to voice what I believe is an urgently needed reminder: that the war on terror can be won with clarity and courage or lost with confusion and vacillation.
International terrorism depends on the support of sovereign states, and fighting it demands that these regimes be either deterred or dismantled. In one clear sentence, President George W. Bush expressed this principle in his historic speech a year ago: "No distinction will be made between the terrorists and the regimes that harbour them." Such strategic clarity was applied with devastating effect to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that supported al-Qaeda terrorism.
But that is only the first step in dismantling the global terrorist network. The other terrorist regimes must now be rapidly dealt with in similar fashion.
Israel has not experienced a terrorist attack like the one the world witnessed on that horrific day last September. That unprecedented act of barbarism will never be forgotten. But, in the past two years, Israel's six million citizens have buried more than 600 victims of terror -- a per capita toll equivalent to more than half a dozen September 11ths. This daily, hourly carnage is also unprecedented in terrorism's bloody history.
Yet, at the very moment when support for Israel's war against terror should be stronger than ever, my nation is asked by many to stop fighting. Though we are assured by friends that we have the right to defend ourselves, we are effectively asked not to exercise that right.
But our friends should have no illusions. With or without international support, the government of Israel must fight not only to defend its people, restore a dangerously eroded deterrence and secure the Jewish state, but also to ensure that the free world wins the war against terror in this pivotal arena in the heart of the Middle East.
Instead of praising Israel for seeking to minimize civilian casualties through careful and deliberate action, most of the world's governments shamelessly condemn it.
For many months, many of these governments have rightly supported the war against Afghan terror. Yet their patience for the war against Palestinian terror ran out quickly. The explanations that are offered for this double standard are not convincing.
First, it is said that war on Palestinian terror is different because a political process exists that can restore security and advance peace.
This is not so. There can never be a political solution for terror. The grievance of terrorists can never be redressed through diplomacy. That will only encourage more terror.
Yasser Arafat's terrorist regime must be toppled, not courted. The Oslo agreements are dead. Yasser Arafat killed them.
He tore them to shreds and soaked them in Jewish blood by violating every one of its provisions, including the two core commitments he made at Oslo: to recognize the state of Israel and to permanently renounce terrorism.
With such a regime and such failure of leadership, no political process is possible. In fact, a political process can only begin when this terrorist regime is dismantled.
Second, it is said that waging war on Palestinian terror will destabilize the region and cripple the imminent war against Saddam Hussein. This concern is also misplaced.
Clearly, the urgent need to topple Saddam is paramount. The commitment of America and Britain to dismantle his terrorist dictatorship before it obtains nuclear weapons deserves the unconditional support of all sane governments.
But contrary to conventional wisdom, what has destabilized the region is not Israeli action against Palestinian terror, but rather the constant pressure exerted on Israel to show restraint.
It is precisely the exceptional restraint shown by Israel that has unwittingly emboldened its enemies and inadvertently increased the threat of a wider conflict.
I must also tell you that the charge that Israel, of all countries, is hindering the war against Saddam is woefully unjust. For my country has done more than any other to make victory over him possible.
Twenty-one years ago, prime minister Menachem Begin sent the Israeli air force on a predawn raid hundreds of miles away on one of the most dangerous military missions in our nation's history.
When our pilots returned, we had successfully destroyed Saddam's atomic bomb factory and crippled his capacity to build nuclear weapons. Israel was safer -- and so was the world. But rather than thanking us for safeguarding freedom, the entire world condemned us.
Ten years later, when American troops expelled Iraqi forces in the gulf war, then secretary of defense Richard Cheney expressed a debt of gratitude to Israel for the bold and determined action a decade earlier that had made victory possible.
That is why there is no alternative to winning this war without delay. No part of the terrorist network can be left intact. For if not fully eradicated, like the most malignant cancer, it will regroup and attack again with even greater ferocity. Only by dismantling the entire network will we be assured of victory.
But to assure that this evil does not re-emerge a decade or two from now, we must not merely uproot terror, but also plant the seeds of freedom.
Because only under tyranny can a diseased totalitarian mindset be widely cultivated. This totalitarian mindset, which is essential for terrorists to suspend the normal rules that govern a man's conscience and prevent him from committing these grisly acts, does not breed in a climate of democracy and freedom.
The open debate and plurality of ideas that buttress all genuine democracies and the respect for human rights and the sanctity of life that are the shared values of all free societies are a permanent antidote to the poison that the sponsors of terror seek to inject into the minds of their recruits.
That is why it is also imperative that, once the terrorist regimes in the Middle East are swept away, the free world must begin to build democracy in their place.
We simply can no longer afford to allow this region to remain cloistered by a fanatic militancy. We must let the winds of freedom and independence finally penetrate the one region in the world that clings to unreformed tyranny.
Posts: 364 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Kindgo
Advanced Member
Member # 2
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posted
Patriotism Over Ambition: Netanyahu Accepts
Agrees 'Conditionally' To Replace Peres
Netanyahu set several conditions before he would agree to take the job, not the least of which would be a promise from Sharon to declare early elections.
But he also secured three specific promises from Ariel Sharon regarding Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians.
The first was the understanding that NO Palestinian state would be established.
The second was a clear outlining of the future geographic positioning of the security barrier between Israel and the Palestinians.
And finally, Netanyahu accepted the job conditional on the removal of Yasser Arafat as Chairman of the Palestinian Authority.
Sharon accepted all three.
CNN 'Netanyahu agrees to become Israeli foreign minister'
Hal Lindsey
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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