Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a speech today in which he outlined the status of the Gaza Strip the “day after” victory over Hamas:
“Total victory requires eliminating the terrorist leaders and destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities. Total victory requires returning our hostages home. Total victory requires that Gaza be demilitarized, under Israel’s full security control, with Israeli control over everything that enters Gaza. These are also the fundamental conditions for ‘the day after’.”
Further, the Times of Israel reported on the Prime Minister’s comments in a press conference on 18 January:
“The decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he declared during the primetime appearance at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, are ‘not about the absence of a state, a Palestinian state, but rather about the existence of a state, a Jewish state.’
“’All territory we evacuate, we get terror, terrible terror against us,’ he said, citing Gaza, southern Lebanon and parts of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Therefore, ‘in any future arrangement, or in the absence of an arrangement,’ he said, Israel must maintain ‘security control’ of all territory west of the Jordan River — meaning, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. ‘That is a vital condition.’
“He acknowledged that this ‘contradicts the idea of sovereignty [for the Palestinians]. What can you do? I tell this truth to our American friends.’”
That sounds an awful lot like “from the River to the Sea”. It is also in near total opposition to the possibility of a two-state solution, which remains the official US position on what should occur on the ‘day after’. I think that the Prime Minister has made it clear that he will do whatever he thinks is necessary for Israeli security, regardless of what the US or other allies think. That position is the essence of sovereignty. But it is exactly the position that Netanyahu thinks should be denied to a Palestinian state.
The US and the EU should state publicly that if Israel does not recommit to the Oslo Accords, including the 5 year limit for the creation of a Palestinian state, that they will no longer grant any more financial aid. If the Israeli government believes that its security requires the subordination of 7 million Palestinians, then it should be prepared to pay the price for that security from its own revenues.
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