Benyamin Netanyahu sought to make his speech like Barack Obama's. He announced it a week in advance, and billed it as a major statement of policy. He spent the week consulting with members of his own party, leaders of the opposition, President Shimon Peres, and David Grossman. Grossman is one of Israel's most prominent literary figures who supports greater accommodation with Israel's Arabs and its Palestinian neighbors.
Like Obama's speech, Netanyahu's would be at a university. It was meant to deal with two disputes between Netanyahu and Obama: the role of a Palestinian state in ongoing negotiations, and Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Like Obama's speech, Netanyahu's was preceded by several days of media speculation about what it would include, and the implications of the contents being predicted.
Obama's principal audience was the leaders of Muslim countries. Netanyahu's was the American president. The prime minister had to extract himself from a trap of his own making. He earlier made a point of continuing the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state. Obama identified those points as crucial for any chance of success in Israel's negotiation with the Palestinians. The Americans also saw them as essential for their own reception among Muslims, problems in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The comments that trapped Netanyahu were unnecessary. Two years of negotiation between the Palestinians and Ehud Olmert included several offers from Olmert expansive enough to cause him trouble with his colleagues. They produced rebuff and even ridicule from the Palestinians. Chronic Palestinian rejection of everything but their own demands, and Hamas control of Gaza made the prospect of a Palestinian state light years away until Netanyahu pushed the verbiage to a public confrontation with the United States.
The topic of settlements might have come up in any case. Previous administrations had complained about Israel's reluctance to honor commitments to halt their expansion, or to remove those that individuals had created without authorization. Netanyahu's comments in favor of continued settlement added to the pressure on the Americans to make an issue of them.
Both Netanyahu and Obama are great talkers, with a capacity to excite expectations among those attuned to their messages. Both have at least a touch of the demagogue. Applicable to both is the likelihood that a politician who rises by hyperbole will fall by hyperbole. Neither will achieve all that he promises. Obama will not accomplish proclaimed goals in reforming the American economy, health care, environment, and energy dependence, along with peace in the Middle East or solutions for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Guantanamo. Netanyahu has a reputation for promising more than he delivers, claiming to have delivered just what he said that he would, and taking credit for accomplishments like economic growth that result in large measure from ongoing national and international events.
The president spoke in a grand hall, with an audience of 3,000 dressed for the occasion, before drapery whose cost would have fed a Cairo neighborhood. Netanyahu spoke in the auditorium of Bar Ilan University's Brain Science Center that was one tenth the size of the Cairo venue. There was no plush decoration. The audience was largely religious men, reflecting the character of the university, dressed as might be expected of Israelis in suits or sport jackets with or without ties, or open necked shirts without jackets.
One can interpret the content of Netanyahu's speech as designed to settle at least part of the disputes about a Palestinian state, or carving out a position that will postpone indefinitely the prospect of an accord.
The prime minister indicated his willingness to pursue the goal of a Palestinian state, but wrapped it in conditions that Palestinians are unlikely to accept. Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Their state may have a police force but not an army, without control over its airspace, and without the authority to make military alliances with other states. Palestinian refugees will not return to Israel. Jerusalem will remain united under Israel's control. Hamas must not control Gaza or the West Bank.
Netanyahu rejected the view, expressed in the Obama speech, that Israel owed its existence to the persecution of the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. He stressed the 3,500 year experience of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, where they created the Bible. While this bit of history may seem trivial to a neutral outsider, it is one of the sticking points with the Palestinian narrative. According to their view, the land was always Arab, and the Jews had, if anything, a minor role in the distant past.
Netanyahu indicated that he would not expand existing settlements or take any further Palestinian land for settlements. He said that he would not interfere in the ongoing lives of the settlers. Thus he rejected, at least by implication, the demand of the United States to halt construction within existing settlements. What really happens will depend on approvals given to building applications, the flow of money for construction, and how Israel defines the borders of each settlement. Israel's extensive definition of settlement boundaries has clashed with those of the Israeli left, as well as with officials of the United States and other governments.
The prime minister devoted considerable time at the beginning of his speech to the point that settlements are not central to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He described its root cause as Palestinian rejection of Israel's existence. He cited violence against Jews prior to the development of settlements after 1967, and the rocket attacks which came after the withdrawal of settlements from Gaza in 2005.
Like Obama's speech in Cairo, Netanyahu's will engender praise and condemnation. Within five minutes of its conclusion an Israeli journalist quoted a Palestinian who said that it was a barrier to accommodation. A right wing Israeli parliamentarian said that Netanyahu went too far. A settler called Netanyahu a traitor to his supporters. A left-wing member of the Knesset said that the speech was "too little, too late."
An important response came from the White House. It endorsed Netanyahu's acceptance of a Palestinian state as the end point of negotiations. It praised the speech as a good beginning, which could put negotiations back on their proper course.
Perhaps the most important response came from ranking Palestinians. They called Netanyahu a swindler and liar, and described the speech as so far from what was necessary that Israel will wait a thousand years for a Palestinian partner.
The prime minister did what was necessary. He kept his policy within the minimums demanded by the important international patron. At least for the time being, things are back where they were before his earlier comments against a Palestinian state and in support of expanding settlements.
Where things go from here will depend on how Netanyahu comments in public on his own speech, how others respond to its content and his actions, plus other events not yet apparent. We are not yet at the end of days.
I welcome comments, sent to my e-mail address below.
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel
Tel: +972-2-532-2725
email: msira@mscc.huji.ac.il