This is from Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress today:
Two years ago I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples: A Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state.
I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it’s my responsibility to lead my people to peace. Now, this is not easy for me. It’s not easy. Because I recognize that in a genuine peace, we’ll be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland. And you have to understand this, in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers.
So that’s it? The “painful compromise” Netanyahu is willing to make is an agreement not to keep the entire West Bank forever? Wow.
(For those not in the know, to Likud politicians “Judea and Samaria” = Israel plus the entire West Bank, aka “Greater Israel.”)
I really don’t follow Middle East politics closely enough to say this with any confidence, but things feel very different to me today than they have in the past. The Israeli prime minister, for the first time ever, now feels free to publicly dress down an American president in the secure knowledge that Republicans consider him a firm partisan ally and Democrats will go along uncomplainingly. Then he goes in front of Congress and says he won’t negotiate the right of return, he won’t negotiate Jerusalem, he insists on a permanent military presence all the way to the Jordan River, and his only concession is that he won’t annex the entire West Bank. And he gets 20 standing ovations for it. Netanyahu’s visit has been practically a triumphal procession.
It’s hard to know what to think of this. My instinctive reaction is revulsion over being treated this way, and that’s despite the fact that I’ve always fundamentally blamed Arabs for the lack of a peace agreement. They’ve started and lost three wars against Israel, they’ve turned down every peace agreement offered to them, and they’ve adopted terrorist tactics against Israel that no country in the world would tolerate. Israel, obviously, bears a considerable share of blame for this state of affairs too, but it’s a distinctly minority share.
At least, that’s how I’ve always seen it. But now? After watching Netanyahu in action; after watching his orchestrated attack on an American president who quite plainly is on Israel’s side and proposed nothing new in the way of negotiating parameters; after watching the almost fawning reception he got from Congress; after watching him make it belligerently clear that he will concede nothing for peace; and after watching his almost smug recognition that he can singlehandedly direct American foreign policy — after watching all that, I just don’t know anymore. Rationally, I still think that Palestinians are the ones who need the bigger reality check, but in my gut it’s now a much closer call than it’s been in the past. The last few days have been pretty sobering ones.
