Barak says parts of Israel should be 'fenced off'

Former Israeli premier Ehud Barak suggests parts of the country should be "fenced off" to prevent terrorist attacks.

Israelis should "disengage" from Palestinians, he said, adding that peace would "probably not" be reached while Yasser Arafat was leader.

His comments came after a second suicide bomb attack at a restaurant near the coastal town of Haifa, which wounded up to 20 people.

A Palestinian suicide attack on Thursday at a Jerusalem pizzeria killed 15 and wounded about 100.

"I believe that basically Ariel Sharon on a tactical level is doing the right thing, namely the same thing that any reasonable government would do to respond to terror," he said.

"It is clear to me that Arafat doesn't have the character of either of the Palestinians Sadat or the Palestinian King Hussain - those were leaders who were responsible for the killing of many Israelis but at a certain point in their careers they realised there was no future for both peoples without being courageous enough to take painful decisions on behalf of both peoples."

He defended Israel's response to last week's suicide bombing in Jerusalem, saying: "There could be no moral equivalent drawn between those who are initiating and promoting terror and those who are defending themselves against it with the utmost care or cautiousness not to inflict collateral damage on the other side.

"We lost 15 people in the middle of our own capital, we lost innocent civilians, kids, a whole family and you cannot expect any government to stand idle and not to respond."

But he was not optimistic about the prospects of settling the conflict: "Peace will only come as part of a negotiated settlement and Arafat is quite probably not the man with whom we will reach agreement.

"He committed himself to put an end to terror, he committed himself to stop incitement, he committed himself to arrest these terrorists and he is not doing any of this.

"Israel was ready under my own government to go very far to take far-reaching calculated risks in order to have peace with Arafat and he refused it. The fact that he turned to violence when such a deal was on the table is something we cannot ignore."