Middle East Online 27 Maggio 2008

Israeli extreme-right MP warns fellow MPs against returning Golan Heights back to Syrians

TEL AVIV - Israeli extreme-right MP Arieh Eldad on Monday demanded the death penalty for anyone who hands over the occupied Golan Heights to Syria, public radio reported.

"Anyone who gives up part of Eretz Israel (Greater Israel) faces the death penalty," said Eldad, an MP of the National Union-National Religious Party, an opposition coalition.

Syria and Israel announced last week that they had resumed indirect peace negotiations through Turkish mediators, ending an eight-year freeze.

The Syrians want the return of all of the Golan Heights which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in 1981, a move never recognised by the international community.

The strategic plateau is now home to some 20,000 illegal Jewish settlers.

Eldad's remarks were disavowed by National Religios Party chief Zevulun Orlev.

"Political assassination is something is banned. Such a call threatens to undermine the struggle against a withdrawal from the Golan," Orlev said.

MP Yoel Hasson of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party dismissed Eldad's comments as "intolerable statements made by a provocateur."

Olmert told MPs earlier on Monday that Israel was left with no choice but to launch indirect peace talks with Syria, a top Israeli official said.

In 1995 an extreme-right Israeli activist assassinated former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, in the aftermath of autonomy accords signed between Israel and the Palestinians.

Source >  Middle East Online (May 27)