Lieberman: Netanyahu holding secret talks with Abbas

The head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party Avigdor Lieberman yesterday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of holding secret talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “There are several strange signs which I interpret as an attempt by the prime minister to hide the negotiations with Abbas from the cabinet,” Lieberman said in an interview with Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth.

“We suddenly saw two weeks ago that the prime minister is willing to clear his entire schedule for a meeting with Abbas. We see that, in magical fashion, the dispute between the Israel Electric Corporation and the Palestinian Authority over debts has been resolved, and all of the power outages have suddenly stopped,” Lieberman claimed.

He added that the Israeli army’s activities in Area A, which fall under the PA’s administrative and security control, are to stop.

“There is a negotiation on the meeting itself, I estimate between Netanyahu and Abbas, and there apparently are all sorts of documents being passed between the two sides, from one side the Palestinian demands from Israel and from the other side all sorts of Israeli promises,” said Lieberman.

The truth will come out during Abbas’ upcoming visit to UN headquarters in New York, he said.

“Then we will be able to know if they reached all sorts of understandings or if Netanyahu, because of an inability to form the coalition, backed away from all the promises and the diplomatic negotiation.