(ANSA) - TEL AVIV, FEBRUARY 07 - CIA director William Burns fears that Israel is on the brink of a new Palestinian intifada.
On a recent visit to Israel and the West Bank where he met with both President Abu Mazen and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Burns expressed his fears in a speech at the 'Georgetown School of Foreign Service' picked up by the Israeli media.
"I was a senior diplomat 20 years ago during the Second Intifada and - he explained - I am concerned, as are my colleagues in the intelligence community, that what we are seeing today bears a very unfortunate resemblance to some of those realities we saw even then" .
"In conversations with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, I have been quite concerned by the prospects of even greater fragility and even greater violence between the sides," he stressed, adding that the agency wants to work "as closely as possible" with both sides in " way to prevent the kind of violent outbursts we've been seeing in recent weeks."
(HANDLE).