Israeli official: Hamas leaders should be slain

JERUSALEM — Israel's deputy prime minister said Israel should assassinate Hamas' leadership, ignore the moderate Palestinian president and walk away from international peace efforts, the latest in a string of hard-line positions voiced by the newest member of the Cabinet.

The comments Saturday by Avigdor Lieberman came as the rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, continued talks on forming a unity government. President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah hopes the coalition deal will enable him to revive peace efforts with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert brought Lieberman into the government last month to shore up a shaky coalition government weakened by the summer war in Lebanon. The Moldova-born Lieberman enjoys tremendous support among Israel's large community of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Since joining the government as minister of strategic affairs, Lieberman's inflammatory statements, such as Saturday's call for Hamas' leaders to be sent to "paradise," have raised fears that peace efforts will be frozen.

Olmert has tried to distance himself from Lieberman, saying he remains committed to the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, which envisions an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

"His comments are his own. They don't reflect Israeli policy," Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said Saturday.

Speaking to Israel Radio, Lieberman said he believes Palestinians are not interested in setting up a state, but rather in destroying Israel. He said Israel must abandon past peace deals, known as the Oslo accords, and the road map.

He dismissed Abbas, elected president in 2005, as an ineffective leader who should be ignored, and said Israel must get tougher with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups, particularly their leaders.

"They ... have to disappear, to go to paradise, all of them, and there can't be any compromise," he said.

Israel has killed a series of Hamas leaders in targeted missile strikes in recent years, including the group's founder, but has not targeted members of the Hamas-led government.

The leader of the Hamas bloc in the Palestinian parliament, Mushir al-Masri, said any attack on the group's leaders would trigger retaliation. The group has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings over the past six years.

Lieberman's party, Yisrael Beiteinu, or "Israel Our Home," has 11 seats in Israel's 120-member parliament and provides a comfortable safety net to Olmert in parliament votes.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, a top Abbas aide, said Lieberman's ideas "are a recipe for the continuation of bloodshed, violence, extremism and hatred between the two sides."

Abbas, meanwhile, was in Gaza on Saturday to push forward with talks with Hamas on forming a unity government.