JERUSALEM
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday described a UN Security Council draft resolution calling for an end to Israel's decades-long occupation and the creation of an independent state of Palestine as a "political attack" on the self-proclaimed Jewish state.
"All these actions at the UN Security Council are part of a political attack by the Palestinians and their supporters against the state of Israel," Lieberman wrote on Facebook.
On Wednesday, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority plans to submit a draft resolution – calling for an end to Israel's occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state – to the UN Security Council.
The bill seeks to apply the so-called "two-state solution," providing the Palestinians with an independent state within pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Lieberman said the move was intended to put pressure on Israel.
"We need to act in a smart and determined way," he said, calling on the Israeli government to resist pressure to withdraw from the occupied West Bank within two years.
"Israel does not take orders from the Palestinians," he said.
He added: "Any attempt by them [the Palestinians] to use the international community to impose any solution that we don't accept would only make the situation in the region worse."
Peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators broke down in April over Israel's refusal to release a group of Palestinian prisoners despite earlier pledges to do so.
The talks were aimed at finding a solution to the perennial Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the roots of which date back to 1917, when the British government called for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state in a move never recognized by the international community.
www.aa.com.tr/en
