A view from the Knesset
If any, only one message was conveyed Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the rest of the world. His political statement at the start of the Israeli Knesset can serve an excellent recipe for the upcoming war in the Middle East. He left room neither for the Palestine National Authority nor for any other Arab party to live under the illusion of peace with Israel, at least not when a government like Netanyahu's is in charge.
When the Palestinians and the US Administration are still preparing for the Washington round of talks, slated to start Monday but postponed due to internal differences between Netanyahu and his foreign minister, David Levy, Netanyahu comes up openly and admits his government will continue Jewish settlement activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "We will continue the Jewish settlement in the Juda and Samaria (the biblical name Israel uses for the West Bank) and Gaza. The Golan Heights are vital for Israel's security. We conduct our talks with the Arabs not according to what they like or what they accept, but on the grounds of what we need and what we want," said Netanyahu in his speech, interrupted many times by voices from the opposition Labor Party members who said even before the session started that they would not give Netanyahu a chance to deliver his speech.
In other words, Netanyahu 's message is nothing more than being ready to talk and talk endlessly, but without reaching any sort of an agreement. He is leaving no choice for Arab negotiators but to either accept his approach of not delivering any fruits and get involved in futile talks or abandon the concept of peace and prepare for war. The same applies to the PNA and to Syria as well. Why would Syria go to talks with Israel when Netanyahu time and again reiterates the vitality of the Golan Heights to Israel's security? And why would the PNA go to Washington, or for this matter to any other venue for talks to negotiate with Netanyahu who openly admits his government won't cease its settlement activities in the Occupied Territories?
"This man never means what he says. He talks of peace when war and aggression occupy the back of his mind," said an old man who came to attend the opening session of the Knesset. Sitting in the special section of the hall designed for journalists, guests and ordinary people, the man said he had fought in all Israel's wars since 1948 but never felt so badly insulted as he does listening to Netanyahu's speech. "He is taking away the peace dream and this is a pity," he said.
The old man seems to belong to the old generation of the Labor Party, or those whom the Israelis consider the founders and builders of the state. But his views reflect to a certain extent the phenomenal polarization in Israeli society not only with regard to the question of peace with the Arabs but also on a number of domestic social, economic and cultural issues.
Screaming from their own seats and warned a number of times by the Knesset speaker, opposition members, mostly from the Labor party, had apparently decided to break the wall of silence which had in fact given Netanyahu some 18 months of calm. The way the opposition reacted during Netanyahu's speech is an indication of a new political opposition in Israel that is not only motivated by lack of progress in the peace talks but also angered by the continued incitement by Netanyahu and his men against the Labor Party. When Netanyahu a few days ago murmured in the ears of a respected rabbi that the Israeli left had forgotten what it means to be a Jew, Labor Party activists saw in his statement a continuation of the provocation Likud started three years ago. That provocation, Labor believes, led to the first assassination in Israel when former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down by an extreme right-wing activist two years ago.
Judging from the way Netanyahu spoke at the Knesset, and the level of anger he caused among the opposition, one shouldn't be surprised if a new military confrontation breaks out in the region. Yet, one should be less surprised if an activist in Israel decides to load his gun and wait until it is well convenient to carry out the second political assassination in Israel, not necessarily against the prime minister but perhaps against a leading opposition figure.