Netanyahu held a news conference last night, and too much attention was paid to what he said about a Palestinian state

Hi Elliot,

I expect you anticipated I’d be trying to understand & seeking your views on this;

what do you think about Netanyahu’s latest ( at least latest here) statement suggesting that a 2 state solution is impossible ? is it ( to my mind a not very subtle ) negotiating 1st position that he can then climb down from and meet in what looks like a compromise position but closer to his wishes than it would have been if he had started in what one would think of as a more reasonable place or is it indeed where he sees the end place as being? how much support does he get from the people? and if not much what hope of doing anything about it? can there/ will there be elections while the war is on? I think you suggested that even if there were the numbers don’t suggest the government would necessarily change to 1 that was less right wing.

 

The headline writers in the foreign media came away from Binyamin Netanyahu’s “news conference” last night with the revelation that he had “publicly” rejected the “US push for a Palestinian state.”  

He did warn rather disingenuously that when he was gone, Israel would have wobbly leaders who would allow a militarized Palestinian state. “I can say something about what they call the day after Netanyahu. I do not love to speak of myself in the third person. But those who speak of the day after Netanyahu are talking about the creation of a Palestinian state led by the Palestinian Authority…”

Personally, I look forward to hearing him one day say, Nixon-like, "You won't have Netanyahu to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." We should live and be well.

On Thursday night, however, all Netanyahu did was reiterate that he opposes a state that could threaten Israel. As most of us Israelis do.

Mainly, his “news conference,” which aired just before the main news programs, was orchestrated so that Netanyahu could attack the mainstream media and feed his brainwashed base. Last night was not primarily about the Palestinian issue. He lied, dissembled, and evaded – about his dysfunctional relationship with his cabinet and the medications he supposedly arranged to be provided to our captives.

Personally, I would have told the BBC and Guardian not to stop the presses over his remarks about a Palestinian state.

The two-state solution mantra has no resonance for Israelis like me. Not at this juncture. Not when polls show that 82 percent of Palestinian Arabs back the butchery of October 7. Not when we are in the middle of a war that is bleeding us. When we have lost over 1,400 soldiers and civilians. Thousands of soldiers and reservists have been wounded, including an untold number with life-changing injuries. Tens of thousands of citizens have been dislocated from our boundary with Lebanon and our border with Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of families have been upended because fathers, mothers, sisters, sons, and partners have been called up for reserve duty. And when the families of our captives are stuck in a limbo of anguish and torment. 

For the only way to bring our captives home now is by trading them for bloodthirsty terrorists in our prisons, including those involved in the October 7 atrocities. Yet Hamas will not discuss even such a lopsided trade unless we declare defeat, pull out of Gaza, and let it resume governing the Strip. 

Most Israelis do not want to capitulate to Hamas.

So, I am not much in the mood to talk about a Palestinian state – especially since the Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly rejected one. Not when they have yet to accept the idea of a national homeland for the Jewish people in any part of Palestine. We can't want a Palestinian state more than the Palestinians. And Arab-conducted polls before October 7 show the Palestinians reject a two-state solution.

The PLO/PA, crooked and discredited, has demonstrated it is incapable of creating an infrastructure for a Palestinian state. It has opposed normalization and coexistence with Israel. 

The West Bank and Gaza will need some trusteeship. Or a Palestinian Authority 2.0 – whatever.

Right now, though, I want to see Hamas and the other Islamist groups in Gaza (and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Battalions in the West Bank) defanged so that they do not pose a threat to Israel and can’t govern in the Strip or Judea and Samaria.

If we succeed in Gaza, Lebanon will fall into place. If we fail, it will whet Hezbollah’s appetite.

The campaign needs time. Unfortunately, the government is in disarray, so decisions are not being made – about who should run Gaza in places where there is no fighting and about the strategic Philadelphi corridor separating Gaza from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, for example. Hence, as Israel pulls out of north Gaza, we are seeing Hamas policemen in uniform returning to Gaza's streets.  

Getting back to the “two-state solution.” Yes, it is presently impossible since the Palestinians need to accept the idea of a demilitarized state. Every recent Israeli prime minister, including Netanyahu in 2009 – with the exception of Naftali Bennett – is on record as accepting a Palestinian state. No Israeli prime minister will tolerate a Palestinian state that is militarized or will have unlimited sovereignty that would allow it to invite Iran to set up a forward base down the road from Ben-Gurion Airport.

Netanyahu has never been as politically enfeebled as he is today, not because he opposes a PLO or Hamas-led state overlooking our cities but because he allowed us to be caught unprepared after spending months dividing the country and after forming an extremist government that would protect him as he navigated corruption trials.

There is a small but growing movement for elections during the war. I am not sure it is a good idea. But if the war continues to be mismanaged, there may be no choice. The best solution would be for Likud to depose Netanyahu, but he has created a party in his image that is indebted to him, and his internal opponents don’t trust each other.

The polls I see show Likud capturing about 16 seats out of 120 if elections were held today. Remember, no Israeli party in the country’s history has ever won an outright majority. Yesh Atid, led by Yair Lapid – the party I am inclined to support – gets a meager 13 seats. Benny Ganz, the Hamlet-like leader of the National Camp and now a war cabinet minister, would get 39 seats and presumably form the next coalition. The extremist messianic settler parties would get 14 seats. The ultra-Orthodox haredim would get about 15 seats. Meretz (but not Labor) would make it into the Knesset with four seats – in pre-October 7 days, they favored a Palestinian state almost unconditionally.

As a security hawk, I oppose Netanyahu for his corruption, ineptitude, judicial putsch, and – having led the country from 2009 to 2021 and again since December 29, 2022 – for the October 7 debacle. (*) That does not mean he is wrong about Hamas or the PLO. However, he is dead wrong in refusing to make clear what Israel is for. 

By not saying what Israel wants, Netanyahu is opening the door for Hamas or some other nefarious actor to fill the power vacuum, and to provide the answers to questions he refuses to address. I already mentioned that Hamas police are back on the streets in northern Gaza.

He is wrong for playing partisan politics during wartime, refusing to make peace with Yoav Gallant, his defense minister, and repeatedly playing the gullible Ganz for a fool.

But since voters seem to identify with him, it may well be that Ganz is the one who will have the last laugh.

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(*) Netanyahu also held power from 1993 to 1996.