At the end of his remarks yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu signaled his possible support for a two-state solution — without using those words — by stating that he wanted to “make it clear that we don’t want to govern the Palestinians.” But his support for such a solution was not unconditional:
If we resume negotiations, as we plan to do, then I think that the Palestinians will have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; will have to also enable Israel to have the means to defend itself. And if those conditions are met, Israel’s security conditions are met, and there’s recognition of Israel’s legitimacy, its permanent legitimacy, then I think we can envision an arrangement where Palestinians and Israelis live side by side in dignity, in security, and in peace.
Some may view Netanyahu’s conditions as obstacles to peace, since the Palestinians will object to them. But President Obama can hardly dispute either condition. With respect to security, the U.S. has repeatedly assured Israel (during both the Clinton and Bush administrations) of support for “defensible borders” for Israel — which are by definition what Israel requires, at a minimum, to “have the means to defend itself.”
Nor can Obama dispute the condition that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Such recognition is one of the conditions Obama set forth himself in his “Let me be clear” statement to AIPAC last June (“The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper — but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders”).
In any event, it borders on the absurd to ask Israel to recognize a 22nd Arab state (a state so Arab that every Jew must be removed from its territory) without reciprocal Arab recognition of the only Jewish state — as a Jewish state. And Israel’s new borders must be secure and defensible — not simply recognized in a peace agreement.
Netanyahu’s two conditions are thus neither unreasonable nor unprecedented. They are, in fact, the basic requirements of the process, if the goal is not simply two states, but two states “living side by side in peace and security.”
In the past, peace processors have presumed that the creation of a Palestinian state would by itself produce peace. The presumption has no evidence to support it, and plenty of evidence (such as the results of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza) that refutes it. Netanyahu’s conditions are designed to ensure that the process will actually produce peace, and not merely reposition the parties for the next war.
