Livnat calls road map a 'road trap'

Jerusalem Post ^ | Jun. 4, 2003 | MELISSA RADLER

[yonif]

NEW YORK On the eve of the Aqaba summit, Education Minister Limor Livnat called the road map a "road trap," and warned that without including Israel's 14 reservations, the map risks becoming "a repeat performance of the Oslo debacle."

"We made this mistake once; are we going to do it again? Have we learned nothing in the past 10 years since Oslo was signed?" she asked dozens of US Jewish leaders at the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.

The cabinet voted 12-7 last week to accept the road map along with 14 reservations, among them a refusal to accept the Palestinian right of return to Israel and a refusal to negotiate before terrorist groups are outlawed and their infrastructure destroyed. Livnat abstained from the vote.

"It is hard to imagine why a repackaged Oslo would become a cornerstone of Middle East policy," she said of the Bush administration's endorsement of the document, while advocating strong military action against terrorism elsewhere in the Middle East.

Unlike 10 years ago, Saddam Hussein is out of power and the masses are calling for change in Iran conditions that provide a "window of opportunity" to peace-making efforts, Livnat said. "By allowing a repeat performance of the Oslo debacle, even if we call it something else, will slam that window shut. The road map will become a road trap," she said.

Livnat said opponents to the road map, however, should remain in the government. "I think we still have a very important job, to make sure we can support Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon if he needs to confront Washington," she said.

Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky, who canceled his appearance at the meeting due to a last-minute trip to Washington, also expressed opposition to the road map during his visit.

"It takes us back to Oslo, even worse," he said Sunday at the Salute to Israel Day Parade. Livnat also slammed the government's decision to release Fatah terrorist Ahmed Jbarra Abu Sukkar, who was involved in the 1975 Jerusalem attack that killed 14 people, including one American citizen, and wounded more than 60, among them three Americans.

"I totally disagree with any release of murderers from jail," she said. "This was a mistake. I don't think I can justify anything that has been done." Morton Klein, the national president of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote to US Attorney-General John Ashcroft on Monday asking him to seek Sukkar's extradition.