JERUSALEM, March 8 (JTA) — Members of the Likud Party are demanding that Israeli opposition leader Ehud Barak apologize. What is arousing their ire is a comment the former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force made in a television interview that if he were a Palestinian youth, he would probably join a terrorist group. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Barak’s remarks “deplorable,” adding that it “could be interpreted among Palestinian youths as approving or encouraging their joining terrorist organizations.” Officials close to Barak, the head of the Labor Party, responded by saying that the deplorable thing in the Middle East is the deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the explosion toward which the Netanyahu government is leading the two sides.
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