Netanyahu’s self-defeating strategy

By EVELYN GORDON, JPOST

Acting like he thinks Israel is doomed without a peace deal, the prime minister encourages the Palestinians not to sign one.
Someone unfamiliar with Israeli politics might think the decision to free 104 Palestinian murderers became inevitable only once the cabinet approved it last week. Those more familiar with Israel’s political dynamics might date it a few weeks earlier, to whenever US Secretary of State John Kerry shamefully decided to demand that Israel do something America would never do itself.

But in truth, it has been inevitable for years – at least since October 20, 2010, which is when I first heard Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu say that Israel couldn’t “survive in the long run without a political settlement.” For once a prime minister convinces himself that the country’s very survival depends on an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, the inexorable consequence is that almost no concession is too high to pay for a deal, or even for the faintest chance of one. He’ll obviously try to get the best deal he can. But ultimately, he’ll feel justified in crawling to any Palestinian demand, even one as wildly unpopular as the prisoner release, to save Israel from the doom he foresees.

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August 5, 2013 | 6 Comments »

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6 Comments / 6 Comments

  1. @ beniyyar:

    signing an agreement is possible but their observing the conditions of any agreement they sign is impossible. We have signed agreements with the shitheads and they have been in violation of them all before the ink was dry.

  2. @ Michael Comments:

    That was before we gave the diaper heads control of large swaths of Y&S and Gaza. That was when we controlled all of Sinai. That was before the diaper heads increased numerically X 4. That was before they got access to Medium and short range accurate missiles covering all of Israel including all ports of entry and embarkation, all of our power generating plants, hazardous chemical storage and manufacturing facilities. That was before Dimona came into range of their arsenal.

    I doubt that similar findings by a Like group would find today the same security parameters.

  3. In 1967, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff determined that Israel would need to retain 60%+ of Yehuda and Shomron to have secure borders (Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, JCSM 373-67, June 29, 1967).

    If you are an American citizen, contact your Senators and strongly urge them to oppose Diane Feinstein’s Senate Resolution 203 which supports Secretary of State Kerry’s drive to force Israel back to the 1967 Auschwitz borders. Israelis should be publicizing the Joint Chiefs memo in their communities.

    It is not hard to contact Senators, just google their name and go to the contact page on their websites.

  4. The Palestinians will never ever sign a peace agreement with Israel, it makes not one bit of difference what any Israeli government, whether under Netanyah or somebody else, offers, says, or does, the Palestinians only want to destroy Israel. Certainly Evelyn Gordon knows this just as our Prime Minister Netanyahu knows it, just like everybody knows it, but we still have to say things like supporting a two state solution, or we cannot survive without peace, or all sorts of stupid things, because they get the Jew haters and Israel bashers in the US and the EU off our backs for while. Evelyn Gordon should stick to writing about Israeli legal affairs, or if she wishes to pontificate about the “peace process” she should at least show the understanding that our Palestinian enemies only want us Jews gone and our Jewish State of Israel to be destroyed.

  5. Acting like he thinks Israel is doomed without a peace deal, the prime minister encourages the Palestinians not to sign one.

    Isn’t that the good part?

  6. Hardly surprising.

    If Netanyahu really believes Israel’s existence is dependent on Arab goodwill, he’s insane, blind, stupid, lost his marbles or all four.

    If this is why he’s so desperate to obtain an agreement with the Palestinian Arabs at any price, its time for the Jews to start swimming!