JERUSALEM (AFP) — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned in comments published on Friday that maintaining the status quo with the Palestinians would have "deadly" results for Israel.
"I have concluded that we cannot maintain the status quo between us and the Palestinians," Olmert was quoted as saying by the Haaretz newspaper just days ahead of a key US peace meeting.
"We have spent too much time dealing with the status quo but it will lead to results that are much worse than those of a failed conference.
"It will result in Hamas taking over Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank), to a weakening or even the disappearance of the moderate Palestinians," he said.
"Unless a political horizon can be found, the results will be deadly."
US President George W. Bush is hosting a peace conference in the US city of Annapolis on Tuesday hoping to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after a virtual seven-year freeze.
Negotiations between the two sides on a final status agreement is expected to begin after the US meeting, but the parties have been cautious about raising expectations that they will finally be able to resolve the thorniest issues of their decades-long conflict, like borders, refugees and Jerusalem.
Weeks of intense talks between negotiating teams have failed to produce a joint statement for the US meeting to serve as basis for final status talks.
But Olmert has been striking a cautiously optimistic note ahead of the meeting, saying earlier in the week that he hoped to reach a final deal with the Palestinians next year.
In comments to Haaretz, he said: "The gap (between the parties) is such that intensive negotiations will be able to narrow them to the point of formulating an agreement."
The negotiations will "be difficult, but all the difficulties of conducting negotiations are familiar to me. I am not approaching this with naivete, but as a very sober person, who knows all (the Palestinian) weaknesses."
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