Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com
9/3/2010
(CNSNews.com) – Behind the polite talk at Thursday’s re-launch of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at the State Department was a deep gulf on what Israel calls a make-or-break issue – Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
Addressing Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas directly in English, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu identified what he called “two pillars of peace that I think will enable us to resolve all the outstanding issues … legitimacy and security.”
“Just as you expect us to be ready to recognize a Palestinian state as the nation-state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” Netanyahu said, adding that the more than one million non-Jews living in Israel enjoy full civil rights.
“I think this mutual recognition between us is indispensable to clarifying to our two people – our two peoples – that the conflict between us is over.”
Abbas’ response, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned the floor over to him minutes later, was that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had already recognized Israel – in September 1993, when his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, and then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had signed “a document of mutual recognition.”
“And in this document, we give enough to show that our intentions are good, our intentions with respect to recognizing the state of Israel,” he added, speaking in Arabic through a translator.
Left unsaid was the fact that neither in 1993 nor since then has the PLO agreed to recognize Israel specifically as a Jewish state.
On the contrary, Abbas and other Palestinian leaders have repeatedly rejected this Israeli requirement.
“Palestinians reject the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state,” PLO Executive Committee member Wassel Abu Yousef told reporters in Ramallah less than a fortnight ago, after Netanyahu told his cabinet that “recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people” was a necessary component of a peaceful settlement to the conflict.
At a landmark convention in Bethlehem last year, Abbas’ Fatah faction of the PLO adopted a platform rejecting recognition of Israel as a Jewish state…
…As the talks began in Washington Thursday, back in the region the PLO released a statement through its news agency Wafa outlining its vision for a peace agreement.
On the issues which repeatedly have proven to be stumbling blocks over the years since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, the PLO stance was clear…
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