ANALYSIS: AHRON SHAPIRO

ISRAELI Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made the best of a no-win situation with his long-awaited policy speech at Bar Ilan University on Sunday. The Palestinians, rest assured, were going to criticise him no matter what he said. Among Israelis, he was criticised from his Left for offering too little, criticised on his Right for offering too much, and even the people who more or less agreed with what he said criticised him for waiting too long to say it.

In truth, Netanyahu threaded the political needle as best as he could. He balanced domestic and foreign pressures and he did a reasonably good job of it. It is important to put his speech into context with previous peace proposals offered in recent years by Kadima and Labour governments to the Palestinians, and rejected by them.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat recently told the Agence-France Press that in November, then-prime minister Ehud Olmert (of Kadima) offered to withdraw from 90 per cent of the West Bank, while swapping 6.5 per cent of the West Bank (the Jewish settlement blocs) for 5.8 per cent of the territory of Israel and establishing a corridor linking the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. Jerusalem would have been divided. 

According to Erakat, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not accept the deal - not over settlements, by the way - but due to lingering disagreements over water and the Palestinian refugee issue. ”The gaps were wide”, Abbas flatly told the Washington Post in May. The Olmert plan itself represented a sweetening of the proposal pushed by Labour’s prime minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000.

Obviously, the Palestinians are upset that Netanyahu is now offering - certainly regarding Jerusalem - less territory than his predecessors, not more. Naturally, they are angered that Netanyahu talks about security-based limitations on Palestinian statehood that Olmert and Barak never mentioned. However, the Palestinians must recognise that their rejections helped bring Netanyahu to power. The Israeli electorate’s move to the Right in the last election, in part, reflected increasing sentiment among Israelis that no matter how generous the Israeli peace offers get, the Palestinians will continue to reject them in the expectation that they can hold out for a better one.

The Israeli Left is entitled to criticise Netanyahu for his positions, but they must recognise that he has the support of the majority of legislators, as evidenced by his stable unity government. The Israeli Right should recognise that Netanyahu, already in conflict with US President Barack Obama over natural growth in the settlements, could not afford to be portrayed as anti-peace by directly contradicting Obama over the two-state issue.

Those who have questioned why Netanyahu waited until now for his policy speech should remember that he needed Obama’s two-state call found in the Cairo speech to justify his endorsement of any Palestinian state - as a concession to the US, not the Palestinians. And a concession to the US it was. Because at Bar Ilan, Netanyahu endorsed the only version of a Palestinian state that he believes Israel could ever live with, which also happened to be a version of a Palestinian state the Palestinians will likely never accept. 

Why would they? In all final status talks since the Oslo Accords, they have repeatedly rejected offers of sovereignty on more favourable terms. The Palestinians have shown no signs of willingness to compromise and, just as importantly, feel no urgency to do so. The Palestinian leadership, if true to form, will keep right on waiting for a better deal to come along.