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Wednesday June 17, 2009

Israel’s version of Palestinian state still illusory

Midweek
By BUNN NAGARA


ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech on Sunday, kicking off a debate as to whether his government had suddenly agreed to the formation of a Palestinian state.

He was immediately supported by hardline Zionist hawks in his governing coalition who, like him, had rejected a Palestinian state throughout their careers.

That further questioned whether Netanyahu had actually achieved the dramatic turnaround.

For Netanyahu’s “Palestinian state”, he demands that Jerusalem’s status be exclusively Jewish without sharing with Muslims and Christians, and that the state must not have any army or military alliance or control over its own airspace.

He wants the territory to be controlled by Israel more than Gaza now is, being Palestinian in name more than in fact.

Netanyahu further insists that Palestinian refugees will not be allowed to return, and that existing Jewish settlements on Palestinian soil must be allowed “natural growth” instead of being dismantled.

He says there are no plans for new settlements, a condition of fact rather than a new commitment, such that additional settlements may proceed whenever Israel so chooses.

Netanyahu began and ended his speech by evoking the peace efforts of Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat, but his idea of a Palestinian homeland is not theirs.

It is neither the Palestinian state of Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s Camp David Accords, nor George W.

Bush’s Annapolis nor Barack Oba-ma’s Cairo speech.

Nor does it have the same meaning of a “state” as understood by the international community or any political dictionary.

This is because Netanyahu’s speech had three objectives: res-pond to Obama’s speech without really conceding anything, appease his coalition partners by spelling out impossible conditions, and shift the blame of rejectionism onto Palestinians with demands no independence leader can accept.

Just after naming his conditions for entering into peace talks, he denied there were any preconditions.

If the demands are not preconditions, they can only be obstacles.

Netanyahu further argues that rather than say today’s Israel would not have been formed if not for the Holocaust, the Holocaust would not have happened if Israel had been established earlier.

More to the point, his Sunday speech would not have happened if not for Obama’s ten days before, and Netanyahu himself might not be in office now if a previous US president had said what Obama did earlier.

Rather than accept Obama’s concept of two countries “living side by side” allowing Palestinians their rightful “dignity and opportunity”, Netanyahu’s idea is of an unquestioned Israeli state operating above and around a nominal Palestinian one with no sense of legal, moral or jurisdictional equivalence.

Netanyahu’s fanciful solution to a dreaded “Hamastan” in a future Palestine is a discredited “native homeland” Bantustan approach for Palestinians, a concept that collapsed in shame in apartheid South Africa.

His speech explicitly sought Palestinian agreement to Israel as the Jewish state, while implicitly seeking US and other international support for the way he wants to do it.

That gives a clue as to the leverage Obama still has in reshaping Netanyahu’s stillborn ideas.

The Israeli leader may be better employed looking inwards to see what most Israelis really want.

The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a think-tank based in Tel Aviv University, released some interesting survey findings on the day of his speech.

While in 2007 some 63% of Israelis favoured a two-state solution in the proper sense of a “state” for Palestinians, the proportion grew a shade to 64% this year.

Also, 75% of Israelis favour dismantling the illegal Jewish settlements and 57% support their removal even by force.

The Israeli public’s view of Iran is even more telling.

Some 80% of Israelis have no trouble with Iran even if it is armed with nuclear weapons.

Iran is currently pursuing a nuclear power programme for generating electricity, but Netanyahu insists it wants to produce nuclear bombs.

The Israeli public may be able to live with a nuclear Iran, but politicians with certain fixations may be unable to sustain their careers if they did so.

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