PM: Peace will come with recognition of Jewish state
By JPOST.COM STAFF
LAST UPDATED: 07/21/2011 19:43
Even though peace seems distant, Israel "will know peace has been reached when all our neighbors will recognize the right of a Jewish state to exist," Netanyahu says at national memorial ceremony at Mount Herzl in J'lem.
PM Binyamin Netanyahu at Herzl's tomb Photo: Moshe Milner/GPO
Although
peace between Israel and its neighboring countries seems impossible to
reach, peace will ultimately come along with recognition of a Jewish
state, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Thursday at a memorial
ceremony at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
"Even though peace seems
distant and unattainable and there will be many more obstacles before it
is reached, peace between us and our neighbors will come," Netanyahu
said.
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"We will know peace has been reached when all our neighbors
recognize the right of a Jewish state to exist, just as Benjamin Ze'ev
[Theodore] Herzl predicted."
In June, Netanyahu called on
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to recognize Israel as a
Jewish state, saying “Just say the six words – ‘I will accept the Jewish
state.”
In an address to an assembly of the Jewish Agency Board
of Trustees, Netanyahu said, “I stood before my people, people of Israel
and I said numerous times that I will accept a Palestinian state. Now
President Abbas must stand before his people and he has to say these six
words, ‘I will accept the Jewish state.’ I will repeat this over and
over and over again because it is the attempt to fudge, it’s the attempt
to fudge and evade and obscure this essential component of peace; the
removal of this basic obstacle to peace that is required and this is
what the international community must face up to,” he added.
“Once [the Palestinian leadership] says it, we will move inexorably towards peace.”