JERUSALEM: Israel's right-wing Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that further withdrawals from the occupied Palestinian territories would amount to handing them over to Hamas and Iran. "The promise of additional Israeli withdrawals today means that if the IDF (Israeli army) walks out, Hamas walks in, and if Hamas walks in, Iran walks in," Netanyahu told reporters at a Jerusalem press conference. The hawkish former prime minister again criticized Israel's decisions to withdraw from southe
rn Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, saying both had resulted in a "tremendous increase in the power of Iran's proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

The Jewish state has considered Iran its greatest threat since the Islamic republic re-launched its nuclear enrichment program. Israel and the West believe it is aimed at developing a nuclear weapon, a charge Tehran denies. Israel has long accused Iran of supporting both the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, with which it went to war in 2006, and the Palestinian Hamas movement, which seized power in the Gaza Strip in June.

Netanyahu has largely kept to the sidelines in recent months as Israel has pursued talks with the Palestinians revived at a US conference in November and aimed at securing a peace deal by 2009. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas are negotiating on the basis of the 2003 internationally drafted peace roadmap, which calls on Israel to freeze settlement growth and the Palestinians to improve security in the West Bank.

But Netanyahu said the "endemic weakness of Palestinian society" means that it is "not strong enough to resist the onslaught of Hamas and militant Islam." "We recommend that we maintain security. Because effectively if we leave it's not that Abbas will protect us. By staying we protect ourselves and incidentally we protect Abbas too." Netanyahu said steps should be taken to improve the economy in the occupied territory but denied that freezing the growth of settlements would improve the prospects for peace.

The addition of a porch in Ariel does not affect the quality of life in Palestinian towns and villages," he said, referring to the Ariel settlement, one of the largest in the West Bank with a population of over 16,000 people. Netanyahu served as prime minister from 1996-1999 and recent polls have indicated that his Likud party would ride to victory if elections were called this year.