Tuesday, April 21, 2009
At the weekly cabinet meeting:
We are currently formulating security-diplomatic policy. This process will conclude ahead of my trip to Washington in four weeks. In the framework of these deliberations, we will hold Cabinet and Government discussions. I would like to set one thing straight in advance simply because it has been in the media incorrectly today. We insist that the Palestinians - in any diplomatic settlement with us - will recognize the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. The entire international community demands that we recognize the principle of two states for two peoples and we are discovering that this is two states but not for two peoples but two states for one people, or two states for a people-and-a-half. That is to say, there is no doubt that we are being asked to recognize the Palestinian state as the national state for the Palestinian people but there is doubt and not just doubt, it is clear from the quick check that we carried out that the Palestinians have no intention of recognizing the national state of the Jewish People. Of course, this is completely unacceptable. I will not now respond to the question of what will be the nature of the settlement, what will be its components and what authority the Palestinians will have. We reiterate that we have no intention of ruling over the Palestinians. We want for them to rule themselves, except for those powers that could threaten our security and our existence. But there is no doubt that we insist that they recognize the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish People. We have never conditioned the start and existence of talks on advance agreement about this but neither can we see progress on a future settlement without their agreement to this condition. Therefore, not only have we not backtracked from it, we stand behind it strongly and I think that in this regard, we reflect a very broad consensus, not only around this table but among the entire nation, a great part of the nation, and rightly so.
Wow - thanks for this post. His comments were being sold in a completely different light in other places - places I thought which didn't normally practice deception.
Obviously Netanyahu continues to be the wild-eyed, radical, far right-winger that he's always being portrayed as. Imagine:
What could he be thinking? What planet is he living on? To insist that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state? Who'dathunkit?
/sarc