Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Arab Peace Initiative

Henry Siegman

Security, Israel, palestine

Whatever incitement the Palestinian Authority may be guilty of, it pales into insignificance when compared to the incitement that is Israel’s half-century long occupation.

On May 31, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earned plaudits from the international community and angered his ultra-right-wing government when he announced that he sees the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 as a basis for renewed peace talks with the Palestinians. On June 11, at a closed meeting with his fellow ministers, he reassured them that “Israel will never accept the Arab Peace Initiative as a basis for negotiations. [Arab countries] must grasp that they need to revise the Arab League proposal according to the changes that Israel demands.”

These contretemps are a perfect example of the manipulations and deceit that have characterized Netanyahu’s “peace diplomacy” during his four terms as prime minister of Israel. He empowered religious nationalists and xenophobic right wingers, and supported their enlargement of settlements throughout the West Bank, both openly and clandestinely, even as he retained the support of the U.S. Congress and a hidebound American Jewish establishment by claiming that his commitment to a two-state solution has been frustrated by Palestinian and Arab rejectionism.

So what exactly are the changes in the Arab Peace Initiative that Netanyahu now demands? He would like the world to believe that the initiative requires a complete Israeli withdrawal of its occupation from East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank and the removal of all of its settlements east of the pre-1967 Armistice Line. Netanyahu has long maintained that this demand contradicts President George W. Bush’s undertaking to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (April 14, 2004) that the U.S. would support Israel’s retention of certain settlement blocs beyond the 1967 line.

In fact, there is not a scintilla of truth to any of these claims. I know, because I was personally involved over a period of several years in discussions with the author of what became the Arab Peace Initiative, Crown Prince (and later King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and with the Department of State.