This past week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have won reelection. I say "appears" because he still has the task of forming enough alliances under Israel's parliamentary system to form a new government, which requires having 61 of the Knesset's 120 seats. Netanyahu's party, the conservative Likud, got 30 seats. The Zionist Union (liberal, former Labor party) got 24 seats, and the Joint Arab List (made up of four smaller Arab parties) got 13 seats. Seven other parties got the remaining seats.
Towards the end of the election campaign Netanyahu made two comments that supposedly has the Obama Administration and other leftists in a tizzy. First, Netanyahu said that he would not allow the establishment of a Palestinian state during his term in office. "I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islamists against the State of Israel...Anyone who ignores this is sticking his head in the sand. The left does this time and time again."
The spokesliars at the White House and State Department both said that Netanyahu's comments called into question his commitment to peace and the two-state solution. As this writer has noted previously, there is absolutely nothing - and I mean nothing - that would ever call into question the Palestinians (more accurately, the Arabs of Palestine) commitment to peace. Mahmoud Abbas is in office as President of the PA for 10 years, but was only elected to a 4 or 5 year term. He refuses to hold new elections, fearing Hamas would win. So Abbas has no electoral legitimacy. No problem.
Abbas formed a unity government with Hamas, the terrorist group which rules Gaza. The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Abbas just recently again honored one of the biggest murderers of Jews, having led a 1978 hijacking of a bus that resulted in 38 dead (including 13 children) and over 70 wounded. Abbas just named a public square for that female terrorist. The Palestinian schools teach that this murderer of innocents (for the Palestinians no Jew is an "innocent") was a freedom fighter and a martyr. No problem.
Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel last summer - aiming at Israeli civilians and cities. Abbas has said that not one single Jew may live in a new Palestinian state. No problem.
The Arabs initial rejection of a state and peace came in 1947 when the UN voted partition of the area known as the British Mandate, into a Jewish state and an Arab state. But the Arabs had said before the UN vote that they would never accept the existence of a Jewish state. So in 1948 the Arabs attacked Israel, their first attempt to wipe Israel off the map. No problem.
The Palestinians began their first intifada in 1987, lasting until 1993. In 2000, under the auspices of Bill Clinton, Israeli P.M. Ehud Barak offered a state to Yasser Arafat. He rejected the offer by walking out on Clinton and Barak. He returned to the West Bank and started the second intifada. Arab suicide/homicide bombers then blew up Jews in cafes, in malls, on buses and even at a Passover Seder. No problem.
In 2008, during the George Bush Administration, then Israeli P.M. Ehud Olmert offered a state to current P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas ignored the offer, much like Arafat did in 2000. No problem.
Then what is the problem? The fact that Netanyahu told the truth. The truth is that Israel gave up the Sinai to Egypt, after conquering that land in the 1967 war, and then losing some of it in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The peace agreement with Egypt, while shaky, has held for four decades. But when Israel left Gaza in 2005, forcibly evicting their own citizens from the area, they did not get peace. Rather, they ended up with the election of the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza. Hamas has built Gaza into a weapons factory, launching thousands of rockets into civilian areas of Israel. Hamas has built tunnels into Israel for the sole purpose of capturing and killing Israelis. The foreign aid that flowed into Gaza has been used for one purpose: the destruction of Israel. As the Hamas charter says: "Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it."
It is with this background that Obama believes Israel should now also give up Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
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One of the State Department spokesliars was asked why it was a good idea to make a deal with Iran allowing them nuclear capability when they keep saying "Death to America." The reply was that such comments were rhetoric that we are used to hearing. I see. The Ayatollahs "Death to America" is acceptable rhetoric, but Netanyahu saying that now is not the time for a two-state solution is beyond the pale. Got it.
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