Ingibjörg Sólrún fékk að heyra það í Ísrael

Jpost.com: President Shimon Peres took
a hard line on Hamas in an hour-long meeting with Iceland's Foreign
Minister Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir on Tuesday.

Gisladottir is visiting Israel for the first time after assuming office less than two months ago.

She asked Peres was why Israel refuses to negotiate with Hamas.

Peres told her that European leaders who have no experience of
living with day-to-day terrorism, and therefore do not understand it,
should not criticize the measures Israel takes to protect its people,
according to Beit Hanassi.

While the IDF always prefers to take the moral high ground, he
said, there are, unfortunately, times when innocent people are caught
in the cross-fire as the IDF retaliates against terrorists.

Peres also said that as long as Hamas declared it was not bound
by agreements that the PLO had reached with Israel, and as long as
Hamas pursued a policy of terrorism and murder and fired rockets at
Israeli civilians, Israel could not conduct talks with Hamas, according
to Beit Hanassi.

"If someone shoots you in the street," he said, "who's at fault, you or the assailant?"

Peres told Gisladottir that Israelis on the Left and the Right
were united in their desire for peace, but only on the clear
understanding that there would be two states for two nations that would
live side by side in full peace and security.

But the reality of the situation is that Hamas is not
interested in peace, he said. Hamas's goal is to establish a
fanatically religious state that would be an extension of Syria and
Iran, he said.

For the sake of peace, Israel evacuated Gaza in a difficult and
painful process, Peres continued, but since then rockets have been
fired at Israel without letup, even though not a single Israeli lives
in Gaza today.

Israel could not allow Palestinian extremists who were opposed
to peace to impose their rule and murderous policies on the rest of the
Palestinians, Peres said.

Gisladottir is also leader of the Social Democratic Alliance.
Iceland is currently a candidate for a seat on the UN Security Council
for 2009-2010, and the purpose of her three-day visit is to familiarize
herself with Israeli issues as well as those of the region.

Gisladottir also met with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

During their working lunch, Livni outlined conditions in the
region and the Israeli position on the new Palestinian Authority
government headed by Prime Minister Fayad Salaam.

Although both Israel and Iceland describe relations as warm,
neither has an ambassador stationed in the other. Gisladottir will tour
the border with Syria and Lebanon, and visit Sderot.

The two countries hope to strengthen economic ties and to
continue their cooperation in the development of Third World countries.

Peres is due to meet on Wednesday with European Union Foreign
Policy chief Javier Solana and on Thursday with China's special Middle
East envoy, Sun Bigan. Ex-British prime minister Tony Blair, the
Quartet's new Middle East envoy, has asked for a meeting with the new
president next week.