Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Israel's 'take': "The Lebanon red line"

In HAARETZ, here
"... members of the Bush administration think that Israel would not hesitate to "sell" Lebanon to Damascus in order to make peace with Syria, and therefore an Israel-Syria peace negotiation is too risky a proposition ... While Washington and Jerusalem have worked closely together on a range of issues, few issues have been more problematic. Lebanon is one such issue and it has affected the way the U.S. views talks with Syria. It is sometimes carefully couched, so the U.S. can deny it is vetoing peace talks. When an Israeli reporter asked Bush about such a veto several months ago, Bush was careful to say that no such veto existed. However, as one senior Israeli cabinet official put it, "given Bush's tone, it was like a parent telling a child that if you want you can play in traffic. We didn't see it as a green light."

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