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Lieberman says tax money will be transferred after Abbas resigns

January 15, 2015 at 4:28 pm

The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has lashed out at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for submitting a request to join the International Criminal Court (ICC.

“What happened, especially in the last month, has crossed all of the red lines. Another attempt to pass the unilateral decision in the Security Council on the establishment of a Palestinian state and their joining the International Criminal Court in The Hague leaves us no choice but to act against Abbas,” Lieberman was quoted as saying during a meeting with Israeli ambassadors in Jerusalem.

Lieberman called on the Israeli government to continue withholding Palestinian tax money until Abbas is removed from power. “We must not allow the money that is frozen for the Palestinians to ‘thaw’ after a short period of time as it has in the past. This time, we must make it clear that the money will be transferred only after Abbas is gone,” he said.

He also welcomed US Congress initiatives calling for punitive measures against Palestine as a result of its joining the ICC, including closing the Palestinian delegation in Washington and shutting off US aid.

“After Annapolis, we needed to come to the conclusion that Abbas is not a partner for peace, but rather an obstacle. He uses rhetoric against conventional terror but facilitates political terrorism. The recent initiatives cannot be defined as anything but political terrorism. If we are talking seriously about a political process, we first need to get rid of Abbas in Ramallah and destroy the Hamas regime in Gaza. Without these two things, all of our efforts are just talk,” added Lieberman.

Remarking on last week’s attacks against Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris, Lieberman said that, “Most of the conversations, around the world and in France, were regarding freedom of expression, on extremism, on Islamophobia, and not on anti-Semitism, and this is very worrying, especially following the terror attacks in Toulouse and the Jewish Museum in Brussels. We need to stop being so politically correct and we must start telling the truth. It is the same classic hatred of Jews, just the modern version; and murderous anti-Semitism is the main foundation of radical Islam.”

Lieberman slammed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for remarks criticising Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his participation in Paris’s anti-terrorism rally on Sunday. “Even the European states that remain silent when Erdogan speaks out against Israel, calling our country a terrorist state, contribute to the murderous hatred against Jews in Europe,” he said.

“A Europe with a neighbourhood thug like Erdogan is bringing the region back to the reality of the 1930’s.”