Israel is not to blame

With Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, if peace depended solely on Israel, it would have been attained long ago.

By JPOST EDITORIAL
Netanyahu Obama 311 (photo credit: Reuters)
Netanyahu Obama 311
(photo credit: Reuters)
There has been a tendency by some to blame the Netanyahu government for Israel’s growing diplomatic difficulties, in particular over the Palestinian statehood bid in the UN. If only the architects of Israeli foreign policy had put forward some sort of peace initiative, these critics claim, the Palestinians would have aborted their campaign to be recognized by the UN as a state along the 1967 lines.
Opposition leader MK Tzipi Livni said in response to US President Barack Obama’s exceptionally pro- Israel speech before the UN General Assembly Wednesday that “[Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu must initiate the peace process, not as a favor to the Palestinians but for our own welfare...Only the renewal of negotiations will block unilateral measures in the UN and prevent Israel’s isolation.”
Meanwhile, in an op-ed that appeared in Thursday’s New York Times, former prime minister Ehud Olmert criticized Netanyahu for “expending all of his political effort to block Mr. Abbas’s bid for statehood” instead of pursuing a two-state solution.
And Shelly Yacimovich, in her victory speech after clinching the Labor leadership vote Wednesday, said that Netanyahu should call for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. “Don’t let the state be declared unilaterally," said Yacimovich. “It’s in your hands to prevent it.”
In contrast, the US president was careful during his 20-minute speech to avoid placing the blame for the breakdown in negotiations on either side. Instead, Obama called and Israelis and Palestinians to enter into direct negotiations, without mentioning any preconditions.
Apparently, President Obama understands better than our own opposition that the Netanyahu government is not to blame for the absence of peace.
After all, what could Netanyahu conceivably offer the Palestinians that would jump-start talks? Netanyahu already agreed, under American pressure, to an unprecedented 10-month building moratorium in Judea and Samaria – including in consensus settlement blocs such as Ma’aleh Adumim, Efrat and Ariel. But the Palestinians squandered nine of these 10 months, refusing to talk unless the building freeze was expanded to include Jerusalem neighborhoods such as French Hill and Ramat Eshkol, neighborhoods that a majority of Israelis would never give up in a peace deal.
And though Olmert claimed that “the parameters of a peace deal are well known and they have already been put on the table,” he failed to mention that these parameters – which include the creation of a Palestinian state on the territorial equivalent of the pre-1967 lines and the splitting of Jerusalem as the shared capitals of both Israel and a Palestinian state – were already offered in 2000 and 2008 by then-prime ministers Ehud Barak and Olmert, respectively.
Yet Palestinian leaders rejected these offers because they refused to concede the “right of return,” which, if honored, would undermine the Jewish majority by flooding Israel with millions of Palestinian refugees instead of resettling them in a future Palestinian state. In fact, the Palestinian leadership, which refuses to recognize Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people, has done nothing to prepare its people for peace with Israel. Instead, Palestinian media and political leaders continue to glorify terrorists and foster hopes that the Palestinian people will someday return to Jaffa, Haifa and other places inside Israel.
As we approach Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, it is only natural to engage in self-reflection and self-criticism. An integral part of Jewish culture is the acceptance of personal responsibility for one's actions and the need to repent for failures so that they are not repeated. However, in the case of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, there is little, if any, room for self-recriminations. If peace depended solely on Israel, it would have been attained long ago.