The State Department has rejected Israel’s demand that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state be a precondition for further negotiations with the Palestinians. It is easy to dismiss both Israel’s and the Americans’ position here as pre-negotiation posturing, with each side trying to maximize its interests — Israel’s interest that negotiations be stalled as long as possible, and the Americans’ that it move forward. Yet there is a more serious issue at stake here — one that may force the Palestinians to confront the impossibility of their own demands sooner rather than later.

Israel’s greatest interest is that any deal should bring a real and final end to the Palestinian obsession with “resistance” — that is, that an unequivocal, full peace be achieved, without giving the Palestinians’ any pretext for further violence. The biggest mistake of Oslo and other agreements was in putting off the most difficult issues, such as Jerusalem and the problem of Palestinian refugees, until later. The result was that Israel made concrete concessions, mainly land and allowing the arming of the PLO, while the Palestinians continued to insist that they had a right to struggle against Israel. To this day, they have continued to instill hatred in their children through their schools, continued to idolize terrorist “martyrs,” and therefore continued to make peace little more than a dream. Masters at asymmetric warfare, the Palestinians also mastered asymmetric peace: The Israelis continue to beg for it, the Palestinians continue to hold it at arm’s length, insisting on their “right” to fight.

Netanyahu appears to be looking for ways to break this. His insistence on the Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to define itself is merely a mirror to the Palestinians’ own insistence of a right to self-rule. In all its negotiations with more and less peaceful Arab countries, Israel has never demanded that Egypt or Jordan allow Jews to live and move about freely in their countries — basic human rights that every country should grant. But despite this, Israel has nonetheless made peace with them, respecting their right to self-definition perhaps more than they deserved. By forcing the issue of Israel as a Jewish state, Israel is merely asserting its own right to self-definition; Israel is asking no more than that its peace partners give it the same respect. This is a reasonable ground for starting to talk — there will be much harder issues for give-and-take later on.

What do the Palestinians’ gain by rejecting it? Nothing, if their aims of peace are sincere. The only reason they should object is if they want to reserve a pretext for future violence after a peace agreement has been implemented: It is not too hard to imagine that the Palestinian state would see itself as the champion of the rights of Israeli Arabs, who would now be depicted as oppressed under Israel’s “apartheid” rule, giving all those anti-Israel forces around the world that have been summoned to oppose Israel’s “occupation” despite its repeated withdrawals something new to hate Israel for. But all this depends on the PA’s refusing to accept the very idea of a Jewish state — the very idea, that is, of Israel itself.

Desperate to jump-start negotiations and probably miffed at Bibi’s latest intransigence, the State Department has fallen into the Palestinians’ trap.

UPDATE: According to the Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu now denies that recognizing a Jewish state is a precondition for holding talks, but still insists that it be part of any agreement. Not too reassuring for him to backtrack on this point. The Palestinians, for their part, have already jumped on the issue, laying the groundwork for future attacks on Israel on this basis alone.