Netanyahu Says Talks Must Lead to Palestinian Recognition of Jewish State
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photographer: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said direct peace talks with the Palestinians, announced Aug. 20, should lead to a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes Israel as the Jewish homeland.
“Security, recognition of the national state of the Jewish people and the end of the conflict -- these are the three components that will ensure us a real and lasting peace agreement,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet at a meeting yesterday. Reaching an accord will “be difficult, but possible,” he said.
Wassel Abu Yousef, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee, said Netanyahu was setting preconditions for the talks that would be impossible to meet. “Palestinians reject the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state,” he told reporters in Ramallah yesterday.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced three days ago that she and President Barack Obama have invited Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Washington to meet face-to-face and formally open a fresh round of talks with the goal of achieving an accord within a year.
“We are discussing a peace agreement between Israel and a demilitarized Palestinian state,” said Netanyahu, adding that peace could be reached if the Palestinians were “a real partner” to negotiations.
Israeli ministers, including Avishay Braverman, minister of minorities from Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s Labor party, have voiced doubt about whether the talks can succeed.
Settlers’ Organization
The Yesha Council, an umbrella organization that represents Jewish settlers in the West Bank, said a new round of negotiations could lead to violence. “Frustration is inevitable and with it comes the potential for widespread violence and loss of life on all sides,” said Danny Dayan, chairman of the council, in an e-mailed statement.
Issues that have complicated peace talks for years will be on the negotiating table, including the fate of east Jerusalem. Israel claims sovereignty over the area and Palestinians want it to be the capital of a future Palestinian state. Border issues, the right of return for Palestinian refugees and Israeli security will also be discussed.
“There is no chance for the success of these negotiations as they will be carried out without any Israeli commitment to halt settlement activities,” said Hani al-Masri, chief of the Ramallah-based Bada’el Palestine Media and Research Studies Center. The talks “only serve Israel’s interests to gain more time and create more facts on the ground,” he added, referring to Israeli settlement building in Palestinian areas.
Split in Leadership
A split in the Palestinian leadership, which has left Abbas and the Palestinian Authority in charge of the West Bank and the Islamic militant group Hamas governing the Gaza Strip, will further complicate matters, said Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. Any concessions made by Abbas will be viewed by Hamas as betrayal, he said.
“Neither side believes there is a chance of serious progress,” Spyer said.
The Sept. 26 deadline for a 10-month Israeli freeze on construction in the West Bank, a moratorium that excludes public buildings and about 3,000 housing units, is also weighing on the talks.
‘Peace, Not Settlement’
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said on Aug. 19 that talks would fail if Netanyahu didn’t extend the freeze, a move that could jeopardize the Israeli prime minister’s ruling coalition. “I hope the Israeli government will choose peace and not settlement,” Abbas said in a letter today to the Mideast Quartet that includes the U.S., the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.
Dayan called on Netanyahu to stand by his promise to resume settlement construction at the end of September, and said that both the goal and the time frame for the talks set by the U.S. were “unrealistic.”
Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were suspended when Israel launched a 2008 military operation in Gaza it said was intended to stop rocket attacks on its southern towns and cities. Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and Israel, refuses to negotiate with Israel or recognize any prior agreements made with it.
Two Cabinet ministers, speaking on Army Radio ahead of the weekly meeting, voiced doubts that the new round of negotiations would succeed.Braverman said that if negotiations “were in name only,” they would merely lead to a serious crisis.
Minister of Science and Technology Daniel Hershkowitz, from the settler lobby Habayit Hayehudi, said that Palestinians had in the past “rudely rejected” Israeli offers of peace.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net
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