Israel's Top Authors Analyze Netanyahu's Speech

Renowned Israeli authors A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman have both written op-ed's analyzing Binyamin Netanyahu's foreign policy speech:

A.B Yehoshua in Yediot Acharonoth:

For more than 42 years, ever since the Six-Day War, a very small group of people in Israel, not all of whom necessarily hail from the Left, have held aloft the banner in support of dividing the Land of Israel into two states-an Israeli and a Palestinian state-as a necessary solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

 The idea of two states was rejected by a majority of both Israelis and Palestinians. For years Israelis naively asked themselves: who are these Palestinians who deserve a state? And the Palestinians said-the Jews are merely a religious denomination that is spread out across the world. Why does a religious denomination deserve a state?

 We all know that the road to making that idea become manifest is paved with digressions and obstacles, but among the preconditions that were set by the prime minister in his speech at Bar Ilan University, there were some that are crucial and others that are gratuitous and only serve to complicate further a situation that already is rather problematic and complex.

The precondition rejecting the settlement of Palestinian refugees inside the area of the State of Israel is reasonable, logical and justified. What is the point in the return of millions of refugees into the area of a state that is foreign to them insofar as pertains to its character, symbols and the nationality of a majority of its residents?

 But the condition that was set by the prime minister about Palestinian recognition of the Jewish people's right to establish a state, or the existence of a Jewish nation-was gratuitous. In my opinion, it is gratuitous to demand that the Palestinians recognize the nationality of an historic people that is thousands of years old, whose state has diplomatic relations with more than 150 countries. That demand was never set as a precondition for peace with either Egypt or Jordan, and it creates a needless obstacle. It is entirely sufficient to demand that the Palestinians recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel, when everyone knows what that state's territorial and political identity is. Nor will we be giving our recognition to the Palestinian people, but to a sovereign and independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

 The question about the substance of Jewish nationality is complicated for Jews too, and the Jewish nation is an entity that isn't at all clear from a demographic standpoint. The fact that many Jews consider themselves to be Jews only insofar as pertains to their religion and not their nationality creates another difficulty on the way to defining the Jewish people.

The negotiations for the establishment of a Palestinian state are going to be fraught with troubles and obstacles in any event. Let us focus on solving the principal problems-demilitarization, settlements, borders and refugees, and leave the theological and historical questions to be solved by real peace.

David Grossman in Ha'aretz:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech was indeed, as it has been described, the speech of our lives. Our bogged-down, hopeless lives.

Now, after every word of the speech has been analyzed and weighed, we should step back and look at the whole spectacle, the big picture. What the speech exposed, beyond all its juggling and parities, is the desistance we have come to, we Israelis, in the face of a reality that requires flexibility, daring and vision. If we turn from the skilled orator to his audience, we will see how passionately it barricades itself behind its anxieties, and we will feel the sweet stupor from pulsating nationalism, militarism and victimhood, which were the heartbeat of the entire speech.

Netanyahu's speech, which should have aspired to the new global spirit that U.S. President Barack Obama has generated, tells us between its contorted lines that there will be no peace here if it is not forced upon us. It is not easy to admit it, but it seems increasingly that this is the choice Israelis and Palestinians face: a just and secure peace - forced on the parties through firm international involvement, led by the United States - or war, possibly more difficult and bitter than those that came before it.