By Leigh Baldwin (AFP)
JERUSALEM - Israel's foreign minister warned on Monday against attempting to impose a Middle East deal, saying the most peace talks can achieve for the coming year is improving security and the Palestinian economy.
Avigdor Lieberman said Israeli policy must be based on reality
Palestinian demonstrators run for cover as Israeli soldiers fire teargas during a protest
"The Palestinians' radical and uncompromising positions on Jerusalem, the right of return and the settlement blocs create an unbridgeable gap between us and them," Avigdor Lieberman told a delegation of US Democratic lawmakers.
"Therefore, Israeli policy must be based on reality and not illusion while maintaining the dialogue between us and the Palestinians, improving security arrangements and the economic condition of the Palestinians.
"This is the maximum we can reach in the coming years," Lieberman's office quoted the ultra-nationalist minister as saying.
US President Barack Obama has vowed to work vigorously to end the decades-old conflict and his administration is attempting to put the faltering Middle East peace talks back on track following their suspension in December.
The United States is also putting heavy pressure on hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlement construction in the occupied West Bank -- a key Palestinian demand for talks to resume.
But Lieberman warned against any attempt to impose a peace deal.
"Any other extravagant goal such as imposing an agreement that is limited in time, would again end in failure, disappointment and even confrontation," he told the US delegation.
"This is a realistic policy and all the rest is spin, public relations and lack of understanding of the processes taking place at this time."
Lieberman on Monday also lashed out at Nadav Tamir, Israel's consul in Boston who had warned in a leaked memo that the government's policies on settlements were harming ties with the United States.
"Anyone who disagrees with, and is uncomfortable with government policies can resign," his spokesman quoted him as saying.
Washington has repeatedly called for a total freeze on Jewish settlement construction.
Last week Israel drew the ire of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after two Palestinian families were evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah area of east Jerusalem.
President Shimon Peres later told the delegation Israel had agreed to stop building new settlements and that the only unresolved issue was construction within the bounds of those already there.
"The only point where we disagree with America is on building in existing settlements," he said. "I believe this is negotiable."
Peres also said Israel and the Palestinians were for now incapable of agreeing over key sticking point Jerusalem.
"I know that there is a solution for Jerusalem for the future," he said. "But right now we cannot achieve it."
Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, but the Palestinians see the city as the capital of their future state.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, however, that Israel must continue building in settlements on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
"I hope we can convince the Americans to allow this construction," Yishai told reporters.
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