Netanyahu softens stance on Palestinian state

What happened

Under heavy pressure from President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week for the first time that he would support a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In what was billed as a major speech, Netanyahu said such a state must be completely demilitarized, and the Palestinians would have to accept Israel as a “Jewish state,” with Jerusalem as its undivided capital. “In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side by side, in amity and mutual respect,” Netanyahu said. “Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government.” Netanyahu said he would not impose a total freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank, despite a U.S. demand to do so.

Palestinian leaders dismissed Netanyahu’s proposal as “racist” and said it contained so many caveats as to render it useless. In particular, accepting Israel as a Jewish state, they said, would effectively rule out allowing descendents of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes. “We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term ‘Palestinian state,’” said chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. “What he said was that Palestinians left in cantons on the West Bank can have a flag and a song.”

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Still, Obama said Netanyahu’s concession on statehood showed “positive movement” and “at least the possibility that we can restart serious talks.”

What the editorials said

Netanyahu made a major concession, and what did he get for it? asked Investor’s Business Daily. “The diplomatic equivalent of warm spit.” The Palestinian Authority actually said Israel’s offer “torpedoed the peace process” and could “trigger a new intifada.” Leaders of Arab countries echoed that hard line. The response once again proves that “no amount of concessions by Israel will ever be enough.”

Netanyahu got the response he deserved, said the Los Angeles Times. He invited Palestinians to begin peace negotiations without preconditions, “but then immediately dictated what sounded like his own conditions on the central issues.” Netanyahu essentially presented the Palestinians with the prospect of a truncated state, riddled with Jewish settlements, with no army. But it is significant that he admitted that Palestinians deserve their own state. Obama can start from there and “work as an honest broker to push the two sides back to the bargaining table.”

What the columnists said

The main sticking point remains the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, said Harold Meyerson in The Washington Post. Netanyahu dug in his heels on that issue to avoid a fight “with the hard-right forces in his governing coalition.” But that guarantees him a fight with Obama, who repeatedly has insisted that Israel freeze all settlements, as it earlier agreed to do. Moreover, “a clear majority of American Jews” now see the growth of settlements as “a threat to Israel’s long-term survival.”

Settlements are a side issue, said Jeff Barak in The Jerusalem Post. They certainly are not crucial to Israel’s existence, yet Netanyahu is allowing them to become the focus of an intense argument with Washington. “Frittering away U.S. and Western support for Israel over the issue of a few houses here and there in the West Bank is irresponsible in the extreme.”

Not to mention doomed, said Peter Beinart in Time. Netanyahu will end up backing down because he needs to build up credit with the U.S. president. The fact is, in a year or two, he may well have to “ask for U.S. support for a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program.” Of course, conceding too much could cause the right-wing parties to bolt the Israeli government, toppling Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. “But that’s not Obama’s problem.”

What next?

The U.S. is expected to pressure Israel to return to the bargaining table—without preconditions, said Bronwen Maddox in the London Times. Washington is likely to demand that Netanyahu leave the status of Jerusalem open, at least in principle, and that he reverse himself on settlements—and soon. In fact, reports suggest that Israel is looking for a face-saving way out of the settlements corner, perhaps by proceeding with construction already under way but agreeing to no new building. “The Obama team appears to consider that the proper pace of diplomacy is weeks, not months.”