Netanyahu's Speech on a Palestinian-Israeli Settlement

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday delivered his much-awaited speech setting out his principles for a Palestinian-Israeli peace. The speech was an answer to U.S. President Barack Obama's pricinples, set out in a speech in Cairo.

Netanyahu accepted, for the first time, the notion of a Palestinian state--but within strictures the Palestinian leadership immediately found unacceptable.

The speech offered few new ideas. Rather, it reframed Likud Party policy regarding Palestinians and the West Bank, including the refusal to talk with Hamas, share Jerusalem or take responsibility for Palestinian refugees in any way, and leaving silent such issues as the shape of a Palestinian state, the future of the occupied Golan Heights, or previous American peace initiatives such as the road map.

Netanyahu spoke in Hebrew to an invited audience at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at arch-conservative, religious Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv.

I'll have a full analysis of the speech here shortly. Meanwhile, here are highlights, in Netanyahu's words, from the speech, the full text of which you can read here.

• To Arab leaders: "I turn to all Arab leaders tonight and I say: Let us meet. Let us speak of peace and let us make peace. I am ready to meet with you at any time. I am willing to go to Damascus, to Riyadh, to Beirut, to any place- including Jerusalem."

• On the root of the conflict: "And the simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland."

• Conditions for peace: "a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people."

• On Palestinian refugees: "There must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel’s borders. For it is clear that any demand for resettling Palestinian refugees within Israel undermines Israel’s continued existence as the state of the Jewish people."

• On Palestinians: "But we must also tell the truth in its entirety: within this homeland lives a large Palestinian community. We do not want to rule over them, we do not want to govern their lives, we do not want to impose either our flag or our culture on them."

• On a Palestinian "State": ", the territory controlled by the Palestinians will be demilitarized: namely, without an army, without control of its airspace, and with effective security measures to prevent weapons smuggling into the territory – real monitoring, and not what occurs in Gaza today. And obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts."

• On Jerusalem: "Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths."

• On settlements: "we have no intention of building new settlements or of expropriating additional land for existing settlements. But there is a need to enable the residents to live normal lives, to allow mothers and fathers to raise their children like families elsewhere. The settlers are neither the enemies of the people nor the enemies of peace. Rather, they are an integral part of our people, a principled, pioneering and Zionist public."

• On Hamas: "The Palestinians must decide between the path of peace and the path of Hamas. The Palestinian Authority will have to establish the rule of law in Gaza and overcome Hamas. Israel will not sit at the negotiating table with terrorists who seek their destruction."

See Also:

• The full text of Netanyahu's speech
• Netanyahu's Aipac speech: what he didn't say
• Benjamin Netanyahu: Profile
• Benjamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem Day
• Obama-Netanyahu: Round 1 Goes to Obama
• Palestine and the Palestinians: Profile