Howard Schneider reports in the Washington Post on Netanyahu’s Peace Stipulation (h/t Backspin)
I suppose what’s disturbing about the article is its portrayal of Netanyahu’s demand as “new.”
The documents accepted by Israeli leaders during breakthrough peace talks with the Palestinians in Oslo in 1993 said nothing about their country’s status as a Jewish state or homeland — a concept absent as well from other accords negotiated by the two sides as recently as 2007.
“It has never been an Israeli demand,” said Ron Pundak, a member of Israel’s negotiating team in Norway and now director of the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv. “When we negotiated Oslo, the issue of the characteristics of our state was never an issue. I think it is a mistake that we demand of others how we define ourselves.”
Well, no the nature of Israel was not explicitly part of the Oslo agreements. It was, however, implicitly there. One of the fundamental demands of the Palestinians was that they would change their Charter to eliminate all the clauses calling for the destruction of Israel.
That would have included article 20 of the Charter:
The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.
(See here too.)
Quite clearly this denies that Jews have any right to a state and serves as a tenet of Palestinian nationalism and a justification for further terror. Though Arafat supposedly convened the Palesitnian legislature twice to remove those sections of the charter, the PA never replaced the charter and this language remains a core belief of the PA and its leaders. Pundak parrots the PA’s claim that the nature of Israel was never discussed. But that’s misleading, the failure of the Palestinian leadership to acknowledge the historical ties of Jews to Israel and consequently Israel’s legitimate claim to the land.
When PM Netanyahu asks that the Palestinians acknowledge that Israel is Jewish state he is asking them to acknowledge the historical Jewish ties and rights to the land. This is a lot to ask, because it goes against their fundamental beliefs. But it is not a new demand. The chutzpah isn’t that Netanyahu is making this demand, but that nearly 16 years after the peace process started that the Palestinians still have not accepted Israel’s right to exist.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
