World Jewish News

Netanyahu in AIPAC speech calls on Abbas to recognize the Jewish state, 'no delays, no excuses'

‘’Just as Israel is prepared to recognize a Palestinian state, the Palestinians must be prepared to recognize a Jewish state,’’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2014 Policy Conference on Tuesday, one day after meeting US President Barack Obama at the White House.
He called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to recognize the Jewish state. ‘’In doing so you would be telling your people, the Palestinians, that while we might have a territorial dispute, the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own is beyond dispute,’’ he added.
‘’You would be telling Palestinians to abandon the fantasy of flooding Israel with refugees, or amputating parts of the Negev and the Galilee. In recognizing the Jewish state, you would finally making clear that you are truly prepared to end the conflict,’’ Netanyahu declared. ‘’So recognize the Jewish state. No excuses, no delays, it’s time.’’
He told the annual AIPAC event, attended by 14,000 people that ‘’peace is Israel’s highest aspiration,’’ adding : ‘’ I’m prepared to make a historic peace with our Palestinian neighbors, a peace that would end a century of conflict and bloodshed. Peace would be good for us. Peace would be good for the Palestinians. But peace would also open up the possibility of establishing formal ties between Israel and leading countries in the Arab world.’’
He said many Arab leaders today ‘’already realize that Israel is not their enemy, that peace with the Palestinians would turn our relations with them and with many Arab countries into open and thriving relationships.’’
He continued, ‘’The combination of Israeli innovation and Gulf entrepreneurship, to take one example could catapult the entire region forward. I believe that together, we can resolve actually some of the region’s water and energy problems. You know, Israeli has half the rainfall we had 65 years ago. We have 10 times the population. Our GDP has shot up, thank God — GDP per capita, up. So we have half the rainfall, 10 times the population, and our water use goes up. And which country in the world doesn’t have water problems? Yep. Israel.’’
‘’Why? Because of technology, of innovation, of systems. We could make that available to our Arab neighbors throughout the region that is not exactly blessed with water. We could solve the water problems. We could solve the energy problems. We could improve agriculture. We could improve education with e-learning, health with diagnostics on the Internet. All of that is possible. We could better the lives of hundreds of millions. So we all have so much to gain from peace.’’
In his speech, the Israeli premier also paid tribute to US Secretary of State John Kerry, whom he called “indomitable” and “the secretary of state who never sleeps.
“We’re working day and night to secure a durable peace,” he said.
Joking about how much he likes to draw lines, he said, “I hope the Palestinian leadership will stand with Israel and the US on the right side of the moral divide. On the side of peace, reconciliation and hope.”
But Netanyahu spent the bulk of his speech addressing Iran’s nuclear threat, especially in relation to the crisis in Syria. Recalling a visit to the Golan Heights field hospital that is treating Syrian refugees, he said that while Israel is exporting humanitarian workers all over the world to aid in disasters, “The only thing Iran sends abroad are rockets, terrorists and missiles.’'
He said he heard from a wounded Syrian in this field hospital: “All these years Assad lied to us, they told us Iran is our friend, Israel is our enemy. But Iran is killing us, and Israel, Israel is saving us.”
“Israel is humane, Israel is compassionate, Israel is a force for good,” Netanyahu emphasized.
“Iran continues to stand unabashedly on the wrong side of the moral divide,” Netanyahu said.
He reiterated his call for the US to keep the economic pressure on with sanctions until Iran dismantles its nuclear program.
“I’m often asked whether Israel truly wants diplomacy to succeed,” he said. “The answer is of course we want diplomacy to succeed. But this threat will not be eliminated by just any deal; only a deal that allows Iran to fully dismantle its nuclear capability.”
A final agreement with Iran must require Tehran to fully dismantle its nuclear capability, he said, warning the audience that Iran’s current missile development had its sights on America’s eastern seaboard.
Netanyahu dismissed arguments that Iran wants a peaceful nuclear program, questioning why heavy water reactors, secret nuclear sites closed to international inspections, and the development of inter-continental ballistic missiles are necessary to a peaceful program.
The Israeli Prime Minister warned that Americans should understand that such ICBM technology is meant to target far-flung regions, like America’s East Coast, and not Israel – which can be reached by weapons that Iran already possesses.
The end game of negotiations, Netanyahu reiterated, was “not just to prevent them from having that weapon, but from having the capacity to make the weapon.”
In order to achieve that, he said, a negotiated solution must include dismantling – not just restricting construction of — Iran’s heavy water reactor and underground enrichment facility, and strip Iran both of its centrifuges that allow for the enrichment of uranium as well as its standing stockpile of enriched uranium.
Leaving Iran with enrichment capacity, he warned, will allow it to remain as a “threshold” nuclear power, “able to develop rapidly nuclear weapons at a time when attention is focused elsewhere.”

EJP