‘We’ll evacuate 23 outposts in a matter of weeks or months’
Monday, July 6th, 2009 | 
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Posted by John under: Israel in the Last Days
Defense Minister Ehud Barak met Middle East envoy George Mitchell for the second time in a week on Monday, and promised that Israel would evacuate 23 illegal outposts in the West Bank in a matter of weeks or months, as opposed to years, Army Radio reported.
Israel in the Last Days
“And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.”
—Amos 9:14-15
The defense minister said that progress was made during his meeting regarding regional peace talks.
“I think there is progress. There’s still a way to go,” Barak told Reuters after the talks in London, which lasted just over an hour.
Barak said he was optimistic about the chances of “preparing the ground for launching a major peace process.”
When asked about a Reuters report that Washington was urging Arab governments to agree to ease sanctions on Israel if settlement activity is frozen, Barak said, “I think the Americans are active on this issue.”
“While they are demanding from Israel steps and concessions in order to enable this regional peace effort to take off, they are approaching the Arabs as well and asking what they can contribute in terms of … starting normalization with Israel,” he told Reuters. “We are looking and trying to find a formula [which] needs to show our readiness to be sensitive to the needs of others.”
Barak said the discussion with Mitchell was “very good and constructive.”
He said they had spoken about measures which would ensure “our slight differences regarding how to deal with the issue of settlements will … be clarified but within the context of the need to push ahead the wider peace agreement.”
Concerning an earlier assertion by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that due to him residing in the settlement of Nokdim, Barak was leading the talks on settlements to avoid a conflict of interests, the defense minister told a Channel 2 reporter after the talks with Mitchell that “undoubtedly, Lieberman has a central role.”