Public Security Minister Omer Barlev said he discussed rising violence by West Bank settlers against Palestinians with a senior American diplomat, drawing rebukes from pro-settlement ministers and right-wing opposition lawmakers.
Barlev, a member of the center-left Labor party, met Monday with Victoria Nuland, the US undersecretary for political affairs. He tweeted that the two discussed “settler violence and how to reduce tensions in the area and strengthen the Palestinian Authority.”
His comment came after Nuland told him that the US State Department was keeping track of settler violence, according to the Haaretz daily. Barlev told Nuland his ministry and the Defense Ministry were working together to address the matter and said he was working to deploy more police in the West Bank.
"strengthen the Palestinian Authority" is a throwback to Shimon Peres' naive "If we give Arafat power and guns he'll use them to control his own people", a line he kept repeating even as Arafat kept using the power and guns to kill Jews. However, if a Leftist could learn from his mistakes, he wouldn't be a Leftist!
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