Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined his vision for peace with the Palestinians this afternoon in a rare address to a joint session of Congress, days after President Obama floated a peace proposal in which the borders of Israel and Palestine would be based on a modified version of the boundaries that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Netanyahu claimed he was willing to make “painful compromises” and “give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland” to broker a two-state solution but once again said he considers the pre-1967 lines “indefensible” for Israel.
For the people who measure these things this way, the affection for Netanyahu in the chamber was clear: the Israeli prime minister received 29 standing ovations from Congress during his address; at President Obama’s last State of the Union he got 25. (In fact, Al Jazeera initially tweeted the speech with the hashtag #AIPAC”–the pro-Israel lobby Netanyahu addressed last night–before changing it to #US Congress. The mistake, we imagine, was inadvertent, but analysts could still have a field day with that one). Al Jazeera’s Dima Khatib, for example, writes that Netanyahu would never receive 20 standing ovations in the Israeli parliament, adding that “US congressmen are so excited about Netanyahu’s speech that they clap at almost every paragraph, like Arab parliaments do to Arab leaders!”
But aside from the politics of clapping, what exactly is in Netanyahu’s proposal? The Israeli prime minister called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to accept a Jewish state and “tear up” the reconciliation deal Abbas’s Fatah faction recently signed with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, since, as Netanyahu put it, Hamas is bent on Israel destruction. Netanyahu demanded that any Palestinian state be demilitarized, that Israel retain areas in the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv suburbs and maintain a military presence along the Jordan river, that Jerusalem remain the undivided “capital of Israel,” and that Palestinian refugees not be permitted to return to Israel. Analysis of Netanyahu’s address is going in several different directions.
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WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, broadly laying out the Israeli response to President Obama’s peace proposals, called on the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Tuesday to accept what Mr. Netanyahu framed as a tenet: that Palestinians will not get a right of return to Israel. In so doing, he made clear that he was giving no ground on the major stumbling blocks to a peace agreement.
“I stood before my people and said that I will accept a Palestinian state; it’s time for President Abbas to stand up before his people and say, ‘I will accept a Jewish state,’ ” Mr. Netanyahu said to cheers from a hugely friendly crowd of Democratic and Republican lawmakers gathered in the House chamber of the Capitol.
“Those six words will change history,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “With those six words, the Israeli people will be prepared to make a far-reaching compromise. I will be prepared to make a far-reaching compromise.”
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