PMO’s office says government wants two-state solution
Bibi may be distancing himself but there is no evidence that he would support a TSS on Arab terms. The source said that the PM “is interested in a resumption of negotiations without preconditions,” and that his positions regarding support for a two-state solution remain in force.. Bibi is ready to embrace a non-existent solution. Big deal. Ted Belman
TOI
The Prime Minister’s Office on Saturday firmly distanced itself from comments made to the Times of Israel by Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon that a strong majority in the government and the coalition oppose a two-state solution with the Palestinians and would block the creation of a Palestinian state if such a proposal ever came to a vote.
Danon’s comments “do not represent the position of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government of Israel,” the sources said in response to Danon’s interview, which was published on Thursday.
Taking the highly unusual step of contacting The Times of Israel during Shabbat to make Netanyahu’s position clear, the sources went on to say that the prime minister “is interested in a resumption of negotiations without preconditions,” and that his positions regarding support for a two-state solution remain in force.
“Netanyahu calls on the president of the Palestinian Authority to restart talks without delay at which all issues will be raised to discussion,” the sources said. “The Palestinian Authority will raise its demands, and Israel will raise its demands which include, among others, stringent security arrangements, recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, and the declaration of an end to the conflict.”
The sources indicated that it was very important that Netanyahu’s position be prominently restated.
Danny Danon at his office in the Knesset. (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
It would appear that Danon’s comments may have discomfited the prime minister and caused dismay in the international community, exposing the government’s internal divide on the issue just as US Secretary of State John Kerry heads back to the region on June 11-12, for his fifth visit since taking office, in an effort to get Israel and the PA back to the negotiating table. Earlier in the week, Kerry warned that this might be the last chance to secure a two state solution. “The status quo is simply not sustainable,” Kerry said. “We will find ourselves in a negative spiral of responses and counter-responses that could literally slam the door on a two-state solution.”
Danon’s statements to The Times of Israel came in his first major interview with an Israeli news outlet since he became deputy minister.
“Look at the government: there was never a government discussion, resolution or vote about the two-state solution,” Danon said. “If you will bring it to a vote in the government — nobody will bring it to a vote, it’s not smart to do it — but if you bring it to a vote, you will see the majority of Likud ministers, along with the Jewish Home [party], will be against it.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, speaks with US Secretary of State John Kerry during the annual ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem in April. (photo credit: AP/Gali Tibbon)
Danon further said that Netanyahu calls for peace talks despite his government’s opposition because he knows Israel will never arrive at an agreement with the Palestinians. “Today we’re not fighting it [Netanyahu’s declared goal of a Palestinian state], but if there will be a move to promote a two-state solution, you will see forces blocking it within the party and the government,” Danon said.
The deputy minister said “there is no majority for a two-state solution” among the 31 lawmakers that make up the Likud-Yisrael Beytenu Knesset faction. The Likud party’s central committee, about 10 years ago, passed a motion against the creation of a Palestinian state, Danon said, adding that “legally” the party was opposed to the concept of two states for two people.
In a much touted 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, Netanyahu in principle agreed to a Palestinian state, on the condition that it be demilitarized and it recognizes Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. In recent weeks the prime minister has vowed to cooperate with US efforts to restart peace negotiations and has repeatedly called on Palestinian leaders to resume talks without preconditions.
But several key members of the current government, including Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin, coalition chairman Yariv Levin and other senior Likud MKs, are staunchly opposed to a two-state solution, advocating instead the partial or complete annexation of the West Bank to Israel. The entire 12-member Jewish Home faction, including three ministers, likewise rejects the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
The members of the remaining parties in the coalition — Yesh Atid and Hatnua — endorse a two-state solution, yet together have merely 25 Knesset seats, compared to a combined 43 mandates of Jewish Home and Likud-Beytenu.
Speaking to The Times of Israel in his Knesset office, Danon said that there is currently zero debate about the two-state solution within the Likud because there is no “viable partner” on the Palestinian side and it seems unlikely that peace talks would resume any time soon.
If Kerry were to get the talks restarted, however, and Netanyahu and the Palestinians agreed on the implementation of a two-state solution, “then you have a conflict” within the government, Danon said. “But today there is no partner, no negotiations, so it’s a discussion. It’s more of an academic discussion.”
Asked whether Netanyahu truly is in favor of a two-state solution, Danon replied that the prime minister tied the creation of a Palestinian state to conditions he is certain the Palestinians will not agree to. “He knows that in the near future it’s not possible.”
RalphtheOgre Said:
Must imply as: Preconditions otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever.
Bibi is repeating “we demand nothing at all” like a web puppy desiring to kiss the camel shit between the toes of Abbas. So that means he accept the basic law of Abbas including:
Article (12) Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.
Article (19) Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People’s armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.
But he refuses to accept the Levy Report……
As Yadlin suggested, make one last offer to the Pal and if they refuse, that is their problem.
I (not Yadlin) would then follow with annexation of J & S.
The Prime Minister can say whatever he wants. He knows full well the Arabs will never negotiate with him.
TSS is politically dead. He is the only one for it and no one else in Israel cares.
ArnoldHarris Said:
The Jewish way is reflected in this verse from Psalm 149:6
“May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double-edged sword in their hands,”
In the ceremony of Induction of new recruits in the IDF, each soldier recives in his right hand a rifle and a Tanach in his left. The Tanach is still part of the obligatory kit of every IDF soldier and must be displayed as such in every inspection of the troops.
Nahal Haredi ceremony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=w8DIOGz3aLk&feature=endscreen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=akBJgcequzU
Deu 11:24: Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Then will the LORD drive out all these nations from before you, and you shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves. Every place where on the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even to the uttermost sea shall your coast be. There shall no man be able to stand before you: for the LORD your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land that you shall tread on, as he has said to you.
Joshua 1:3 I will give you every place where you set your foot, (SETTLEMENTS!!!) as I promised Moses.
You are absolutely right, Arnold! The question is: why so many Jews (stupid) do not realize it!!!
@ ArnoldHarris:
You’re right, of course.
If Danon knows what he is talking about, and assuming the following:
1) That Danon is not a bullshit artist;
2) That push comes to shove about the Shomron and Yehuda and the 350,000 or more Jews living there already in addition to the 300,000 Jews in the annexed part of Jerusalem;
… then the ruling coalition in Netanyahu’s government must and will split wide open.
If the Jewish nationalists of Israel are serious about keeping under Jewish rule the ancient heartlands of the Jewish nation, then they must take steps that would threaten the untrustworthy leadership of the government of Israel with a civil insurrection, along with the implied threat of eliminating any personalities in that government who persist in purposefully destroying Jewish cities and villages in pursuit of a peace than can never and shall never be achieved accept under terms that would lead to the certain extinction of the Jewish state.
That’s exactly the way such issues are handled in every other country in human history, isn’t it? And in our own relatively recent history, the leftist Jews of Ben-Gurion’s Palmach arranged the death through British hanging of more than one of the Irgun and Lehi, didn’t they? And the right-wingers in the 1930s bumped Arlosoroff along a deserted Mediterranean beach, didn’t they? And the killing of Rabin was done as long-delayed payment of his role in killing Jews on the Altalena, wasn’t it?
So it is time for all of you to be perfectly honest with yourselves and answer the question that all of you may have to face one day: If Jewish traitors take over the government of the State of Israel, and begin dismantling your country for the benefit of your Arab enemies and so that people such as Netanyahu and this new Yesh Atid gang can get Obama’s paymasters to put them onto some yet-undiscovered but presently-hidden US gravy train, and if you cannot rid the government of the struggling Jewish state of these vile leeches by means of the ballot box, then what do you imagine haShem and the ancient judges of Israel would advise or even command you to do?
Speaking as an American as well as a Jew, there are times when civil insurrections are not only justified but imperative if the commonwealth and the rights of the citizens are to be protected.
Think about it before calling me a crazy fascist.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
An Israeli leader (BB) who gave Israels 2nd most holy and important Jewish site to foreign rule (Hebron), will in the end give up even Jerusalem.
Hebron is the site of the oldest Jewish community in the world, which dates back to Biblical times. The Book of Genesis relates that Abraham purchased the field where the Tomb of the Patriarchs is located as a burial place for his wife Sarah. According to Jewish tradition, the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Matriarchs Sarah, Rebekah, and Leah are buried in the Tomb.
Hebron has a long and rich Jewish history. It was one of the first places where the Patriarch Abraham resided after his arrival in Canaan. King David was anointed in Hebron, where he reigned for seven years. One thousand years later, during the first Jewish revolt against the Romans, the city was the scene of extensive fighting. Jews lived in Hebron almost continuously throughout the Byzantine, Arab, Mameluke, and Ottoman periods. It was only in 1929 — as a result of a murderous Arab pogrom in which 67 Jews were murdered and the remainder were forced to flee — that the city became temporarily “free” of Jews. After the 1967 Six-Day War, the Jewish community of Hebron was re-established. It has grown to include a range of religious and educational institutions.
BB is lower than a dog!!!
Laura Said:
Hmmm: Where have we heard that said before?
The Rogers peace plan and the Saddat initiative (1970-1972)
Madrid (1991-93)
Oslo (1993-)
1996-1999 agreements
Newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a new policy following the many suicide attacks by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since 1993, including a wave of suicide attacks prior to the Israeli elections of May 1996. Netanyahu declared a tit-for-tat policy which he termed “reciprocity,” whereby Israel would not engage in the peace process if Arafat continued with what Netanyahu defined as the Palestinian revolving door policy, i.e., incitement and direct or indirect support of terrorism. The Hebron and Wye Agreements were signed during this period, after Israel considered that its conditions were partially met.
Hebron agreement
Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Chairman Arafat at the Erez Checkpoint in the presence of US negotiator Dennis Ross. The protocol was initialed at 2 A.M. by Israeli chief negotiator General Dan Shomron and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.[1] The agreement called for:
An IDF withdrawal from 80% of Hebron within ten days.
By March 7 Israel would begin the first phase of withdrawal from rural areas in the West Bank.
Eight months after the first stage, Israel would carry out the second phase of the withdrawal.
The third phase was to have been completed before mid-1998. In this phase Israel would withdraw from the remaining parts of the West Bank apart from “settlements and military locations.”
Within two months of the Hebron Accord, Israel and the PA would begin negotiations on the permanent status agreement to be completed by 4 May 1999. The U.S. interpretation of the accord is contained in a Note for the Record and the U.S. commitments to Israel are contained in a letter from Secretary of State Christopher to Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Knesset approved the protocol on 16 January by a vote of 87 to 17, the Labor opposition voting with the government.
Wye River Memorandum
Camp David 2000 Summit
Clinton’s “Parameters” and the Taba talks
Beirut summit
The “Road Map” for peace
Israel-Hamas ceasefire of 2008
2010 direct talks
2013 talks
“Several intense weeks of indirect three-way diplomacy between representatives of Hamas, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority”, no agreement was reached.[50] Also, intra-Palestinian reconciliation talks stalled and, as a result, during Obama’s visit to Israel, Hamas launched five rocket strikes on Israel.[50]
Secretary of State John Kerry met with the Arab League and representatives from Israel and the Palestinian Authority about the possibility of reverting back to the 1967 borders with land swaps. No official agreement was reached. (Wikipedia)
Good.