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Netanyahu Presents Israel's Case at the White House

(New York Times) Daniel Gordis - At the White House on Wednesday, President Trump afforded Prime Minister Netanyahu an opportunity to do what he does best, what he did when he first took the world stage as Israel's ambassador to the UN in 1984. The president gave the prime minister a chance to make the case for the legitimacy of the Jewish people's return to their ancestral homeland. That was more than a rhetorical opportunity. For Mr. Netanyahu and many Israelis, Palestinian denial of that legitimacy is the real reason for the failure of the peace process. From the White House and in the presence of a sympathetic president, the prime minister was finally able to assert that the Palestinian commitment to a two-state solution has long been a hoax, that the Palestinians have employed two narratives, one for international consumption and another for Palestinians at home. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (like Yasir Arafat before him), has consistently denied that the Jews have a historic connection to the Temple Mount. The Arafat-Abbas tradition of denying a longstanding Jewish link to Jerusalem is the Palestinians' inimitable way of saying that the Jews are simply the latest wave of Crusaders, that Israel is nothing but a colonialist presence in the Middle East. The belief that President Abbas sees the two-state solution as a steppingstone to a one - Arab - state solution leaves many Israelis cynical about the peace process and tiring of the rhetoric about two states. If the Palestinians want political sovereignty, the Palestinian Authority will have to lay the groundwork by forging an entirely different narrative about Israel and Jews. Dr. Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President and the Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem.
2017-02-17 00:00:00
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