Does Israel WANT Peace?

by Lawrence Bush

Here’s what the JTA Wire Service recently reported: “American Jews strongly believe in Israel’s commitment to peace and largely think the Palestinian leadership and people are opposed to it, according to a new poll. Eighty-four percent of respondents in the survey released last week said the Israeli government is committed to a lasting peace, compared to just 20 percent who said the same about the Palestinian Authority . . . .”

But here’s what Rabbi Henry Siegman, former president of the World Jewish Congress, says in a stunningly honest and outspoken piece in The Nation (June 13, 2011):

The lip service that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, pay to [a two-state solution] is a cover for their government’s overriding goal of foiling one.... [Netanyahu] uttered not the slightest reproach when senior members of his own Likud Party and ministers in his government announced the formation of a 39-member Land of Israel Caucus, the largest caucus in the Knesset... [which includes] several other ministers and deputy ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet.... The official goal of the caucus is to strengthen “Israel’s grasp on the entire Land of Israel.” If that’s not clear enough, [Benny] Begin [a member of Netanyahu’s inner security cabinet] helpfully elaborated: “The establishment of a foreign independent sovereign state headed by the PLO in parts of the Land of Israel stands in opposition to two basic ideas that are both supported by a majority of the Knesset: the absolute historic right of the Nation of Israel to the Land of Israel and the right of the State of Israel to national security.”

“Is there any question,” Siegman continues, “in anyone’s mind how the United States would react to the presence in Mahmoud’s Palestinian Authority government of ministers who make similar claims to Palestinian rights in any part of pre-1967 Israel?”