Israel's prime minister offers a "big zero"

By Mel Frykberg

RAMALLAH (IPS/GIN) — Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee and a close confidant of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, has dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's foreign policy speech Sunday night as a "big zero."
Abed Rabbo said the speech was empty of content and pointless. "Netanyahu is a swindler ... who makes up tricks about the achievement of peace," he was reported as saying by the Palestinian news agency Maan.
"Netanyahu's remarks have sabotaged all initiatives, paralyzed all efforts being made, and challenge the Palestinian, Arab, and American positions," Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeinah said in a statement.
In a major policy speech June 14 at Israel's Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, Netanyahu for the first time endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but said it must be demilitarized.
In the speech, Netanyahu called for immediate peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
"I call on you, our Palestinian neighbors, and to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority: Let us begin peace negotiations immediately, without preconditions," he said. "Israel is committed to international agreements and expects all the other parties to fulfill their obligations as well."
However, he also said that Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He said even moderate Palestinians' refusal to acknowledge Israel as such is the root of the conflict. Palestinian leaders have refused such a pronouncement on the grounds that it would annul the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is now Israel.
"When Palestinians are ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, we will be ready for a true final settlement," Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu also explicitly opposed the Right of Return for Palestinians, saying, "there must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders. For it is clear that any demand for resettling Palestinian refugees within Israel undermines Israel's continued existence as the state of the Jewish people."
As expected, Netanyahu suggested for the first time that he is prepared to see the creation of a Palestinian state, but said that he would not accept a "terrorist state."
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who just last week told IPS that Palestinians were in their strongest position ever politically and that this time around the U.S. meant business, also lashed out at Netanyahu's speech.
Erekat said the Israeli premier's speech had "closed the door to permanent status negotiations. We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it," Erekat said.
"He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated, and that settlements would remain. The peace process has been moving at the speed of a tortoise. Netanyahu has flipped it over on its back."
Erekat has gone as far as to call for annulment of the Arab peace initiative. The Arab initiative was a peace plan sponsored by the Saudis and adopted during the Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002. The plan called for normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world in return for Israel withdrawing from occupied Arab land and returning to its internationally recognized borders.
While the U.S. administration has hailed Netanyahu's reference to a Palestinian state, something he has refused to do since taking office in February, the pre-conditions for establishing this state and the kind of state it would be is very much in question.
Netanyahu only clambered on to the two-state solution bandwagon reluctantly and at the very last minute following intensive pressure.
This pressure came not only from U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, but from the European Union, Israeli opposition figures, and regional Arab leaders. Netanyahu also faces growing U.S.-Jewish criticism of his far-right policies.
However, critics from across the Palestinian and Israeli spectrums have dismissed Netanyahu's speech as aimed solely at placating Obama and offering nothing new apart from lip-service rhetoric towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.
"The ball is now in the Americans' court. It remains to be seen whether they will buy this faulty product Netanyahu is trying to sell them," said Samir Awad, political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank.
"Netanyahu, in a not very subtle way, basically undermines two of Obama's main demands. He refused to cease settlement expansion, and the kind of state he envisions would not be a truly independent state by international standards," Awad told IPS.
"Palestinians would have no control over their borders, natural resources or air space, besides being a demilitarized state," added Awad.