Some leaders in Europe treat the Palestinians “like a spoiled child” and instead
need to “tell the Palestinians the truth,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
said Sunday during a meeting with visiting Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay
Mladenov.
According to government sources, Netanyahu told Mladenov,
considered one of the friendliest foreign ministers toward Israel in the EU,
that there were individuals in the EU who never hesitated in telling Israel what
they expected it to do, but were very reticent to take the same liberties with
the Palestinians.
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He was specifically talking about a reluctance by some
in the EU to call explicitly for the Palestinians to give up on a “right of
refugee return” and to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, even
though these Europeans had no qualms about calling clearly for Israel to agree
to a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines and to redivide Jerusalem.
By
not speaking with the same determination or frankness with the Palestinians,
Netanyahu said, these leaders were “doing a disservice to those individual
Palestinian leaders who are ready for compromise and deserve their support.”
The
government sources named neither the Europeans nor the Palestinian leaders to
whom Netanyahu was referring.
Israeli officials have long complained that
while the Europeans are very specific when it comes to the solutions they
envision regarding future borders or Jerusalem, when it came to an issue like
refugees they often suffice with saying that a “just solution must be
found.”
Why, one official asked, do they not use that same formula when
addressing all issues, saying that a “just solution” needs to be found to the
border question, rather than plainly referring to the 1967 lines as the
resolution of that issue/ Netanyahu, who is scheduled to travel to Bulgaria and
Romania in early July, reiterated Israel’s opposition to the Palestinians’ UN
gambit, saying UN recognition would “put into UN cement” the maximalist
Palestinian positions and prevent flexibility later.
To advance peace,
Netanyahu said, it was necessary to oppose the PA’s move to the
UN.
Bulgaria, along with countries like Romania, Poland and the Czech
Republic, are considered among Israel’s closest supporters in the
EU. When they were part of the Warsaw Pact, however, they were among the
nearly 100 countries that recognized a Palestinian state in the late
1980s.
Regardless, Israel is lobbying these countries to vote against
recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN in September, and – according to
one government official – Mladenov gave the impression during his meetings in
Jerusalem that Bulgaria would not support the Palestinian move.
Shortly
after the meeting, Netanyahu met with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton
and Quartet envoy Tony Blair. That meeting was held without aides or advisors,
and nothing was revealed of its content except that Netanyahu asked the two to
come out with a clear call to Hamas – just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy
and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have done – to free kidnapped soldier Gilad
Schalit as a way of increasing pressure on the organization’s
leadership.
One government source said the thrust of Netanyahu’s
discussions in recent days with visiting officials was how to come up with a
framework to restart talks that would then get the Palestinians to withdraw
their UN resolution in September. Israel has made it clear, however, that it
will not restart talks in any framework if Hamas is part of the Palestinian
government.
The prime minister told Mladenov that the PA has been
“grossly irresponsible” both in forging a Hamas-Fatah agreement and in planning
to go to the UN.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, would not respond to an
idea New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman floated in a column Sunday to
re-visit the 1947 General Assembly partition resolution, this time in the
Security Council.
According to Friedman, the resolution could be “very
simple” and read as follows: “This body reaffirms that the area of historic
Palestine should be divided into two homes for two peoples – a Palestinian Arab
state and a Jewish state. The dividing line should be based on the 1967 borders
– with mutually agreed border adjustments and security arrangements for both
sides. This body recognizes the Palestinian state as a member of the General
Assembly and urges both sides to enter into negotiations to resolve all the
other outstanding issues.”
In such a resolution, Friedman argued, the
Palestinians “would gain recognition of statehood and UN membership, within
provisional boundaries, with Israel and America voting in favor. And the
Israelis would get formal UN recognition as a Jewish state – with the
Palestinians and Arabs voting in favor.
“Moreover, the Palestinians would
get negotiations based on the 1967 borders and Israel would get a UN-US
assurance that the final border would be shaped in negotiations between the
parties, with land swaps, so theoretically the five percent of the West Bank
where 80 percent of the settlers live could be traded for parts of pre-1967
Israel.”
Netanyahu has never accepted the principle – pretty much agreed
upon by his predecessor, Ehud Olmert – that Jerusalem would have to compensate
the Palestinians for any land Israel retains beyond the 1967 lines with
territory from inside the Green Line.
Without going into details, one
government official said there were plans currently being discussed that would
present a “parallel resolution” to the UN that would include elements palatable
to Israel, such as recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
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