Netanahu speech and reaction

A statement from first principles

Monday, 15th June 2009

The essence of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech a few hours ago, which you can read in full here, was simply this:

Israel wants peace with the Palestinians. The cause of the conflict remains, as it ever was, the Arabs' refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in their historic homeland of Israel, which (contrary to Obama's claim) predated the Nazi Holocaust by several thousand years. Those (like Obama) who think the cause is the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza are confusing cause and effect. The fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is therefore a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Far from Israel occupying Palestinian land in  Judea and Samaria, it is the Palestinians who are living within the ancient Jewish homeland. Israel does not wish to rule them and they can have a state of their own, provided they accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, and provided a Palestinian state is demilitarised so that it does not possess the means to destroy Israel.

To this statement of historical truth and the most elementary requirements of morality and justice, the Palestinians' reply was unequivocal. The BBC reports:

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Israeli leader's speech 'torpedoes all peace initiatives in the region'. Another Abbas aide, Yasser Abed Rabbo, told the AFP news agency that recognition of Israel's Jewish character was a demand for Palestinians 'to become part of the global Zionist movement'. The militant Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, said the speech reflected Mr Netanyahu's 'racist and extremist ideology'.

Well, all that rather seems to make Netanyahu's point for him. How can there be a 'two state solution' when the Palestinians refuse to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state? Quite obviously, such a solution is off the table as far as the Palestinians are concerned.

So now the situation is clear for even the most blinkered to see. It's not the wretched settlements but the very existence of a Jewish state that is total anathema to the Palestinians. Yet as far as Obama is concerned, it is not the Palestinians who are the problem but Israel, which must now be forced to surrender its security to them – even while the so-called moderates of Fatah threaten to resume open warfare because of Netanyahu's temerity in stating the truth of the Jews' right to their own land and with Jerusalem its historic and undivided capital.

Thus the veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeeb Erekat, who said that Netanyahu

will have to wait 1,000 years before he finds one Palestinian who will go along with him with this feeble state...

instantly threatened a resumption of violence:

'President Obama, the ball is in your court tonight,' Erekat said. 'You have the choice tonight. You can treat Netanyahu as a prime minister above the law and ... close off the path of peace tonight and set the whole region on the path of violence, chaos, extremism and bloodletting.

As the Jerusalem Post noted, however, Netanyahu espoused the vision of a Palestinian state living at peace alongside Israel, and reaffirmed that Israel would build no new settlements and take control of no more West Bank land. Just as Obama wanted.

So now will Obama pick up that ball and ask the Palestinians very nicely if they could possibly accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state? After all, what could be more reasonable than that?