DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Israel's defense minister said Thursday his government has not ruled out a large-scale military operation to counter continuing rocket attacks from Gaza. He added that Israel would not rush "to reconquer" the teeming, impoverished seaside strip.
"Probably we will find ourselves there," Ehud Barak said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We are not rushing to reconquer Gaza, but we will not remove any option from the table when it comes to the security of our citizens."
Barak, who holds the key to Israel's tenuous coalition government, also hinted that he would not step down — as promised to his Labor party's voters in last year's leadership primary — even if next week's much-anticipated report into the conduct of the 2006 Lebanon war is damning. Barak became defense minister after the war.
He said "accountability" on his part must be weighed against political stability at a critical time for Israel's security, and the quiet but possibly critical peace talks with the Palestinians. "How exactly to balance between those two elements, that's what I will have to bear in mind when making my decision," he said.
Barak was interviewed at the World Economic Forum at Davos, which he attended as part of a high-level delegation that included Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres — all former or aspiring prime ministers.
Notably absent from the Alpine gathering of political and business leaders was the current holder of the post, Ehud Olmert — who awaits an inquiry commission's report next week on his handling of the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah, a campaign widely judged as a costly misadventure.
The big question in Israel — and for Barak as well as Olmert — is whether the report will blame the prime minister directly and harshly. That would spark calls for Olmert to resign and for Barak to do the same if his senior coalition partner instead tries to hang on.
A world away from the idealism and buzz of Davos, tumult reined in the Middle East as Palestinians this week breached their border with Egypt and streamed into the neighboring country by the thousands. Israeli sanctions imposed on the strip in an attempt to force the end of the rocket attacks have led to severe shortages there.
Barak refused to echo a statement by his deputy, who was quoted as saying Thursday that the border breach meant Israel could now relinquish all responsibility for the strip, including the supply of electricity and water.
Israel pulled troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005 but the strip is sealed off from the world and still dependent on the Jewish state.
In comments confirmed by his office, deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai said that "when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it."
"I don't go too far in my interpretation of this," Barak gruffly offered.
Complicating the picture are ongoing negotiations with the Palestinians that began after the U.S.-sponsored November peace conference in Annapolis, Md.
President Bush has expressed optimism that a deal can be reached by the end of the year, and low-key but high-level talks between Israelis and Palestinians grind on behind a certain cloak of mystery.
"I hope that he's right and we clearly will do all possible efforts to make it happen," Barak said, but he added: "Having some experience in the Middle East ... I cannot tell you for sure there will be a peace agreement in 2008."
Most Israelis and Palestinians probably share that skepticism, given the weakness of both Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who last year lost control of the Gaza Strip — where about a third of his people live — to the militant group Hamas.
Barak, who led Israel from 1999 to 2001, was voted out when peace talks collapsed amid the outburst of a new Palestinian uprising that lasted some four years and in some ways continues. Given his clear interest in returning to his old job, the former military chief was careful in his responses, mindful of the political storm that may be coming and could either propel him back to the top or sink his aspirations.
He said 80 percent of Israelis now agreed with the idea of a Palestinian state and a withdrawal from the Palestinian-populated lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
But are they ready to pay the price? Will Olmert's government offer at least what Barak himself did, as prime minister, some seven years ago — a near total-pullout and a division of sorts of the holy city of Jerusalem?
"Not these terms necessarily to the last detail," Barak said. The key, he said, was that "most Israelis now understand that two states for two nations is a compelling imperative."
"If there is no two-state solution, if there is only one entity called Israel reigning over the whole area, it will become inevitably either non-Jewish or non-democratic."
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