There never will be a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority unless it is willing to accept that Israel is a Jewish state, and there cannot be a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear threat without the threat of a military option, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Saban conference Sunday.
Addressing the Saban Center for Middle East Policy less than 24 hours after President Barack Obama tried to assure Israel it should trust the “peace process,” the Prime Minister tried to throw the reason for a lack of an agreement on peace with the Palestinian Authority on the shoulders of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
He pointed out that that the Arab world rejected the existence of Israel as recommended by the British Peel Commission in 1937 and in the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947.
The core of the conflict has never been the borders and settlements, Netanyahu said in a video address. He explained that the problem is the “persistent refusals to accept Israel as a Jewish state. Six prime ministers…have been ready for compromise, but it was never enough because all of the Israeli proposals, the concessions, were based on the premise that the conflict would be over and there would be no further Palestinian claims on the State of Israel… The Palestinians were unwilling.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu the past year has shifted gears. He knows there is no sense in talking about “issues,” because no matter what Israel says or offers, it faces a broadside opposition by the United Nations, the United States and foreign media, all of which are stuck in the mindset of the Arab world that all of its demands must be met, period, with nothing in return.
He has focused on the failure of the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab world, to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a condition that even the anti-Israel crowd will have a difficult time in rejecting and which the Palestinian Authority cannot accept if its leaders want to stay alive.
“So the question is not why Israel does not compromise, but [is] why do the Palestinians consistently refuse to accept” Israel as a Jewish state,” Prime Minister Netanyahu declared.
He also deflated the PA cry for sympathy with its Big Lie that it has been around for centuries. “We have been around for nearly 4,000 years,” Netanyahu said. The Palestinian have to come to grips with the fact there will always be a Jewish state next to their own. “He then added another requirement – security. No one has revealed exactly what security suggestions U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and retired General John Allen proposed to Netanyahu also week, but the Prime Minister made it clear that all security arraignments must be “based on Israel’s own forces,” Netanyahu asserted. “There is no substitute for that.”
So Abbas can put that in his pipe and smoke it until time runs out on Kerry’s clock because he has made it clear – and there is no backtracking – that no Israeli soldier will set foot on a future Palestinian Authority state.
So Abbas can put that in his pipe and smoke it until time runs out on Kerry’s clock because he has made it clear – and there is no backtracking – that no Israeli soldier will set foot on a future Palestinian Authority state.
Netanyahu also hammered one point over and over concerning the Iranian nuclear threat, after the usual fawning over Israel’ great admiration, respect and love for the United States, meaning President Obama.
“We share” President Obama’s desire for a diplomatic solution, he stated, but he emphasized that “it must be coupled with sanctions and a military threat to succeed.” For good measure, Netanyahu then repeated, “A military option is necessary for a diplomatic solution.”
Netanyahu countered several American claims, particularly those of The New York Times and some Obama administration officials, that Israel is exaggerating the threat of Iran.
“Regimes with unlimited appetites act out their mad ideologies,” Prime Minister Netanyahu told the Saban Forum. “The Jewish people take seriously those who speak of our annihilation.
The Prime Minister also threw another monkey into Obama’s wrenching deal with Iran. He said no deal with Iran should be concluded without a declared change in what he called its “genocidal policy.”
Noting that Iranian president Hassan Rouhani last month called Israel “a rabid dog,” the Prime Minister stated that Rouhani regime “is committed to our annihilation, and I believe that there must be an uncompromising demand at the Geneva talks, for a change in Iran’s policy.
“In other words, there needs to be not just a change in the capability of Iran to arm itself, but also a change in its policy of genocide.
Perhaps the most telling remarks by Prime Minister Netanyahu were his six closing words:
“Thank you all – and good luck.”
It had a slight intonation, of “good luck because you are going to need all you can get and that won’t be enough.”