Opinion |
Feb 1, 2024
haaretz.com
On Thursday, there was a report saying that the heightened extreme notes in Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements are meant to encourage Hamas to “scuttle the hostage deal.” Israel will therefore be able to continue fighting in Gaza while blaming Hamas for the failed negotiations over releasing the hostages. This is exactly the same failed strategy Netanyahu employed in “managing the conflict.” But what can you do, a personality…
Well, if the Israeli press says it ….
“Netanyahu has not only lied on our behalf; he has lied to us. You could say we chose Netanyahu as a society so he would lie to us, since his lies served us well. To heal after Netanyahu, we’ll have to relinquish his lies, the illusion he created for us.
“We have to let go of the lie that we can disappear the national aspirations of millions of people; that we aspire to peace while we construct with zeal in the occupied territories, swinishly taking over more and more land; we have to relinquish the lie that peace is possible without returning those territories, that there’s no occupation, that only Palestinians are guilty of murdering the peace process while we murdered Yitzhak Rabin.
“Israel has to approach the dustbin of history and pull out ‘occupation,’ ‘two-state solution,’ ‘peace in exchange for territories’ – all those terms his royal genius threw away in his megalomaniac hubris. We need to place these terms at the top of our agenda.
“We’ll need to pursue the two-state option to obtain support of the world, mainly the US. We’ll have to strive for peace with Palestinians, present a diplomatic path for ending the occupation and evacuating the settlements, saying clearly and openly, from every diplomatic platform: here’s the Israeli initiative.”
—Haaretz