Netanyahu's speech

Uri Avnery has a good article on Netanyahu's speech on Palestine. He makes a good point that Netanyahu is once again using a trick often used by the stronger party in international negotiations, which consists in making demands on the weaker party that for sure will be rejected by the latter. This helps picture the weaker party as "stubborn" and blames it for the collapse of the negotiations.

So Netanyahu used the phrase "Palestinian state"; maybe symbolically this is important, but in practice, he put a series of conditions to conduct negotiations that he knows the Palestinians can't accept. That will ensure that Palestinians will reject entering into negotiations, and then they will be pictured as the guilty party.

This is pasted from Avnery's listing of Netanyahu's conditions:

Condition 1: The Arabs have to recognize Israel as "the nation-state of the Jewish people" (and not just "a Jewish state," as many in the media erroneously reported). As Hosni Mubarak has already answered: No Arab will accept this, because it would mean that 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel are cut off from the state, and because it would deny in advance the right of return of the Palestinian refugees – the main bargaining chip of the Arab side.

It should be remembered that when the United Nations resolved in 1947 to partition Palestine between a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state," they did not mean to define the character of the states. They were just stating facts: there are two mutually hostile populations in the country, and therefore the country has to be divided between them. (Anyhow, 40 percent of the population of the "Jewish" state was to consist of Arabs.)

Condition 2: The Palestinian Authority must first of all establish its rule over the Gaza Strip. How? After all, the Israeli government prevents travel between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and no Palestinian force can pass from one to the other. And the solution of the problem by establishing a Palestinian unity government is also ruled out: Netanyahu flatly declared that there would be no negotiations with a Palestinian leadership that includes "terrorists who want to annihilate us" – his way of referring to Hamas.

Condition 3: The Palestinian state will be demilitarized. This is not a new idea. All peace plans that have been put forward up to now speak about security arrangements that would protect Israel from Palestinian attacks and Palestine from Israeli attacks. But that is not what Netanyahu has in mind: he did not speak about mutuality, but about domination. Israel would control the air space and the border crossings of the Palestinian state, turning it into a kind of giant Gaza Strip. Also, Netanyahu’s style was deliberately overbearing and humiliating: he obviously hopes that the word "demilitarized" will be enough to get the Palestinians to say "no."

Condition 4: Undivided Jerusalem will remain under Israeli rule. This was not proposed as an opening gambit for negotiations but presented as a final decision. That by itself ensures that no Palestinian, nor any Arab or even any Muslim, could accept the proposal.

In the Oslo Agreement, Israel undertook to negotiate about the future of Jerusalem. It is an accepted legal rule that if one undertakes to negotiate, one accepts to do so bona fide, on the basis of give and take. Therefore, all peace plans provide that East Jerusalem – wholly or partly – will be returned to Arab rule.

Condition 5: Between Israel and the Palestinian state there will be "defensible borders." These are code words for extensive annexations by Israel. Their meaning: no return to the 1967 borders, not even with a swap of territory that would allow for some of the large settlements to be joined to Israel. In order to create "defensible borders," a major part of the occupied Palestinian territories (which altogether make up just 22 percent of pre-1948 Palestine) will be absorbed into Israel.

Condition 6: The refugee problem will be solved "outside the territory of Israel." Meaning: not a single refugee will be allowed to return. True, all realistic people agree that there can be no return of millions of refugees. According to the Arab peace initiative, the solution must be "mutually agreed" – which means that Israel has to agree to any solution. The assumption is that the two parties will agree on the return of a symbolic number. This is a highly charged and sensitive matter, which must be treated with prudence and the utmost sensitivity. Netanyahu does the opposite: his provocative statement, devoid of all empathy, is clearly designed to bring about an automatic refusal.

Condition 7: No settlement freeze. The "normal life" of the settlers will continue. Meaning: the building activity for the "natural increase" will go on. This illustrates the saying of Michael Tarazy, a legal adviser to the PLO: "We are negotiating about sharing a pizza, and in the meantime Israel is eating it."

All this was in the speech. No less interesting is what was not in it. For example, the words: Road Map. Annapolis. Palestine. The Arab peace plan. Occupation. Palestinian sovereignty. Opening of the Gaza Strip border crossings. Golan Heights. And, even more important: there was not a hint of respect for the enemy who must be turned into a friend, in the words of the ancient Jewish saying.