http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/07/netanyahu-admits-he-deceived-us-to-destroy-oslo-accord/#more-19709
Netanyahu Admits He Deceived US to Destroy Oslo Accord
by Jonathan Cook
The Guardian(UK): July 19th, 2010
There is one video Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, must be
praying never gets posted on YouTube with English subtitles. To date,
the 10-minute segment has been broadcast only in Hebrew on Israel's
Channel 10.
Its contents, however, threaten to gravely embarrass not only Mr Netanyahu
but also the US administration of Barack Obama.
The film was shot, apparently without Mr Netanyahu's knowledge, nine
years ago, when the government of Ariel Sharon had started reinvading
the main cities of the West Bank to crush Palestinian resistance in the
early stages of the second intifada.
At the time, Mr Netanyahu had taken a short break from politics but was
soon to join Mr Sharon's government as finance minister.
On a visit to a home in the settlement of Ofra in the West Bank to
pay condolences to the family of a man killed in a Palestinian shooting
attack, he makes a series of unguarded admissions about his first
period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999.
Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the family that he deceived
the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was
helping implement the Oslo accords, the US-sponsored peace process
between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from
the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that
he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.
He dismisses the US as "easily moved to the right direction" and
calls high levels of popular American support for Israel "absurd".
He also suggests that, far from being defensive, Israel's harsh
military repression of the Palestinian uprising was designed chiefly to
crush the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat so that it could
be made more pliable for Israeli diktats.
All of these claims have obvious parallels with the current
situation, when Mr Netanyahu is again Israel's prime minister facing
off with a White House trying to draw him into a peace process that
runs counter to his political agenda.
As before, he has ostensibly made public concessions to the US
administration – chiefly by agreeing in principle to the creation of a
Palestinian state, consenting to indirect talks with the Palestinian
leadership in Ramallah, and implementing a temporary freeze on
settlement building.
But he has also enlisted the powerful pro-Israel lobby to exert
pressure on the White House, which appears to have relented on its most
important stipulations.
The contemptuous view of Washington Mr Netanyahu demonstrates in the
film will confirm the suspicions of many observers – including
Palestinian leaders – that his current professions of good faith should
not be taken seriously.
Critics have already pointed out that his gestures have been extracted
only after heavy arm-twisting from the US administration.
More significantly, he has so far avoided engaging meaningfully in
the limited talks the White House is promoting with the Palestinians
while the pace of settlement building in the West Bank has been barely
affected by the 10-month freeze, due to end in September.
In the meantime, planning officials have repeatedly approved large
new housing projects in East Jerusalem and the West Bank that have
undercut the negotiations and will make the establishment of a
Palestinian state – viable or otherwise – far less likely.
Writing in the liberal Haaretz newspaper, the columnist
Gideon Levy called the video "outrageous". He said it proved that Mr
Netanyahu was a "con artist … who thinks that Washington is in his
pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes". He added that the
prime minister had not reformed in the intervening period: "Such a
crooked way of thinking does not change over the years."
In the film, Mr Netanyahu says Israel must inflict "blows [on the
Palestinians] that are so painful the price will be too heavy to be
borne … A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority, to bring them to
the point of being afraid that everything is collapsing".
When asked if the US will object, he responds: "America is something
that can be easily moved. Moved to the right direction … They won't get
in our way … Eighty per cent of the Americans support us. It's absurd."
He then recounts how he dealt with President Clinton, whom he refers
to as "extremely pro-Palestinian". "I wasn't afraid to manoeuvre there.
I was not afraid to clash with Clinton."
His approach to White House demands to withdraw from Palestinian
territory under the Oslo accords, he says, drew on his grandfather's
philosophy: "It would be better to give two per cent than to give 100
per cent."
He therefore signed the 1997 agreement to pull the Israeli army back
from much of Hebron, the last Palestinian city under direct occupation,
as a way to avoid conceding more territory.
"The trick," he says, "is not to be there [in the occupied
territories] and be broken; the trick is to be there and pay a minimal
price."
The "trick" that stopped further withdrawals, Mr Netanyahu adds, was
to redefine what parts of the occupied territories counted as a
"specified military site" under the Oslo accords. He wanted the White
House to approve in writing the classification of the Jordan Valley, a
large area of the West Bank, as such a military site.
"Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give
[them] the Hebron Agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said:
'I'm not signing.' Only when the letter came … did I sign the Hebron
Agreement. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually
stopped the Oslo accord."
Last week, after meeting Mr Obama in Washington, the Israeli prime
minister gave an interview to Fox News in which he appeared to be in no
hurry to make concessions: "Can we have a negotiated peace? Yes. Can it
be implemented by 2012? I think it's going to take longer than that,"
he said.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His
latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the
Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine:
Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by
Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.
***
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/07/20107199346452716.html
Israeli 'loyalty oath' approved
Al Jazeera: Monday, July 19, 2010
The Israeli cabinet has approved a provision that would require all
prospective citizens living in Israel illegally to swear allegiance to a
"Jewish democratic state".
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said on Sunday that the law
would preserve Israel's "Jewish and democratic character".
Human rights groups have condemned the measure, saying it would make it more
difficult for Palestinians to obtain Israeli citizenship.
The Jerusalem Post said the measure was designed to make it more difficult
for Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs to obtain citizenship.
"Dangerous" and "racist"
The new provision is actually an amendment to the Citizenship and Entry into
Israel Law passed in 2003, which makes it all but impossible for
Palestinians to obtain Israeli citizenship.
That law was originally passed as a temporary emergency measure, but the
Knesset has repeatedly extended it, despite a number of legal challenges
from Israeli NGOs.
The law means that many Palestinians married to Israelis actually live in
Israel illegally.
Israel's Association for Civil Rights called the newest amendment
"dangerous" and "racist". Adalah, an Israeli NGO, said the changes would
prevent families from reunifying and force non-Jews to embrace Zionism.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz condemned the amendment in an editorial,
calling it an attempt to "light a societal fuse".
Land seizures
Meanwhile, the government is also moving forward with a plan to seize
thousands of abandoned properties in occupied East Jerusalem, according to a
Haaretz report.
Yehuda Weinstein, the Israeli attorney general, told the supreme court that
the government plans to seize land from people who fled Israel when it
became an independent state in 1948.
The seizure would also apply to land owned by Palestinians who live in the
occupied West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
The court will have to decide whether or not to approve the seizure.
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