Insane foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s appointment by Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t take long to spark controversy. His remarks at his swearing in ceremony set the tone of what will probably be an obstructionist stance in terms of peace with the Palestinians. Lieberman kicked off by rejecting last year’s Annapolis peace process in favor of 2002’s Road Map for Peace, which essentially requires the Israeli government to do, well, nothing until Hamas is dismantled. Israeli columnists are not impressed.
Akiva Eldar, in a pretend letter by a diplomat writing from the Israeli embassy in Utopia, where he alludes to the United States:
Yesterday my eldest grandson called and asked what I would do when the man who wants to get rid of our Arab citizens comes for a visit.
What do I tell him? That I’m just doing my job? When I think that my deputy, a young Arab diplomat, will have to host Lieberman, I get the chills. I asked him, jokingly of course, if he has signed the loyalty-to-the-State-of-Israel form already. I don’t envy our guys in Cairo, who have to explain how their peace-loving state appointed to a top diplomatic post a man who threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam and cursed the Egyptian president to hell.
The Middle East staffers in Utopia’s foreign ministry are not suckers. They are fed up with sending millions of dollars to the Middle East every year. The economic crisis is palpable here, too, and already some politicians and commentators are asking why their taxpayers should foot the bill of Israeli occupation. One official reminded me that the entire “donor states” matter is not philanthropy but an instrument to advance the peace process. He suggested that I make it clear to my superiors that if Netanyahu intends to gamble on the Iranian card and endlessly extend the negotiations with the Palestinians, we will have to pay the teachers’ and doctors’ salaries in the West Bank.
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