PM: Peace will come with recognition of Jewish state

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.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
PM Binyamin Netanyahu at Herzl's tomb 311 (photo credit: Moshe Milner/GPO)
PM Binyamin Netanyahu at Herzl's tomb 311
(photo credit: 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.
RELATED:Netanyahu: We are ready to renew negotiations tomorrowAbbas: UN statehood bid will not affect peace process  "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.”