by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright March 8, 2015
All Rights Reserved.

            With the clock ticking down to the March 17 Israeli parliamentary elections, 65-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu insisted he would not cede land to the PLO-Hamas Palestinian government.  Hoping to sway his conservative Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beinteiu Party and Naftal Bennett’s ultraconservative Jewish Home Party to join his Likud Party coalition, Netanyahu has all but wrapped up the March 17 election.  Liberal Labor Party leader, 54-year-old Yitzhak Herzog and 56-year-old moderate Hatnuah Party’s Tzipi Livni are all but finished in their long-shot bid to oust Netanyahu who’s been Israeli Prime Minster since March 31, 2009.  After accepting House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) invitation to speak to a joint session of Congress March 3, Netanyhu got no bump from his high-stakes speech warning of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

             Pandering to Lieberman and Bennett’s conservative parties, Netanyahu promised to not cede land to Palestinians, essentially ending attempts for the time being of a two-state solution.  After the PLO joined Hamas April 23, 2014, it made a two-state solution virtually impossible, expecting Israel to cede land and sign a peace treaty with a terrorist group committed to its destruction.  Hamas, now in control of the PLO, has never accepted any negotiated peace deal with Israel, continues to call for Israel’s destruction.  Secretary of State John Kerry officially ended the latest U.S. peace effort July 20, 2014, only 12 days after Hamas began a rocket war with Israel July 8, 2014.  Netanyahu’s decision today to end more land concessions should come as no surprise only nine days before the March 17 elections.  Talking tough before the election, Netanayhu hopes to secure his reelection. 

             Kerry’s one year act of peace-making frustration ran into a new hiccup with the U.S.’s only peace partner 79-year-old PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas joining Hamas.  “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that any evacuated territory would fall into the hands of Islamic extremism and terror organizations supported by Iran. Therefore, there will be no concessions and no withdrawals.  It is simply irrelevant,” read a statement from the Likud Party.  Whether admitted to by the U.S., the U.N. or any other international body, all parties know that Abbas is no longer a peace partner for a two-state solution.  Joining Hamas pulled the rug out from underneath ongoing U.S. efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestinians.  While there are political overtones to Netanyahu’s statements, there’s also the practical obstacle of making peace with a government sworn to Israel’s destruction.

             When an Egyptian court ruled Feb. 28 that Hamas was a terror group linked to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, the PLO-Hamas government lost its legitimacy with a neighboring Sunni government.  U.S. State Department officials no longer have a legitimate peace partner in Abbas, rendering two-state solution talks suspended for the foreseeable future.  While Abbas would like to pretend things a business-as-usual, Netanyahu stated the obvious that his government would no longer cede territory to a U.S. and Egyptian-labeled terrorist group.  However many times, since Palestinians and other Arab capitals lost the 1967 Six-Day War, the late Yasser Arafat and Israel tried but failed to negotiate a peace settlement, the current conditions make peace proposals unrealistic and unfeasible.  Whatever fans Palestinians have at the U.N., they can’t impose a two-state solution on Israel.

             U.S and U.N. officials need to figure out how to either separate the PLO from Hamas or get Hamas to lay down its arms and sign an unequivocal peace deal, ending all military operations and publicly accept Israel’s right to exist.  Past agreements hinged on Palestinians reluctantly recognizing 1968 U.N. Resolution 242, demanding Israel return to the pre-1967 borders in exchange for a peace deal.  Hamas not only doesn’t accept any past peace deals with Israel, it openly calls for Israel’s destruction.  Hamas leaders are sworn to jihad against what they call the Zionist state.  “Today Netanyahu revealed his true face,” said former Arafat aid and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.  “Since 1993, he [Netanyahu] worked hard for the destruction of the option of peace and the option of a two-state solution,” forgetting that Hamas continues to call for Israel’s destruction.

                Netanyahu’s call to not cede land stems from the fact that Palestinians are now represented by a recognized a U.S. and Egyptian-branded terrorist group.  Erekat likes to blame Netanyahu but he needs look no further than the April 23, 2014 unity agreement between Hamas and the PLO.  Once the PLO joined Hamas, Abbas decided that armed conflict was the way to go.  Whatever losses the PLO-Hamas government sustained in its 2014 war with Israel, it was a choice for war over peace. While blame goes both ways, PLO-Hamas knew that only destruction would come to Palestinians from a war with Israel.  Netanyahu’s decision to end the two-state solution for the time being helps his chances cobbling together a government with Lieberman and Bennett.  Israel’s liberal voices led by Herzog and Livni need to back Netanyahu in finding a realistic way forward to protect Israel’s national security.

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