PM Netanuahu
PM NetanuahuIsrael news photo: PMO

A grass-roots organization has written to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to protest what it calls his “false” declaration that a Palestinian state is a matter of national consensus.

The Prime Minister's website reports that Netanyahu had said on Sunday that while the PA refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, he himself has expressed repeatedly that Israel recognizes “the Palestinian national state.” Netanyahu said that this was a matter of “national agreement.”

However, Mattot Arim, a Rehovot-based “peace-for-peace” (rather than "land-for peace") organization founded in 1992, wrote to Netanyahu that in fact, “The sane majority in Israel certainly does not favor a Palestinian state… This mis-information or dis-information is therefore not helpful, and should be corrected.” 

Mattot Arim spokesperson Susie Dym noted that the institutions of Israel's ruling party, the Likud, are “on record to this day opposing [a Palestinian state], as are many senior Likud ministers including popular Cabinet Minister Dr. Benny Begin, Environment Minister Gilad Erdan (just last week), and even Finance Minister and ex-pro-Palestinian activist Dr. Yuval Steinitz.”

Mattot Arim also noted opposition to a Palestinian state within several other political parties and in various public opinion surveys. Israel Our Home, Shas, the National Union and the Jewish Home parties are against a Palestinian state, and in Rehovot, the mayor, his electoral opponent, and two-thirds of the city council signed a statement opposing a Palestinian state.

Tel Aviv University's War and Peace Index in May 2009 found that the majority (52 percent) of Israeli Jews opposed a two-state solution if this required "substantial concessions" by Israel. Another TAU survey, conducted a year earlier, found that by a large majority (73:20), Israeli Jews believed a Palestinian state would not solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.  IMRA's Brain Base poll of July 2009 found that 70 percent of Israeli Jews felt autonomy in Judea and Samaria better served Israel's interest than Palestinian statehood, while only 15 percent supported Palestinian statehood instead.

Netanyahu himself, addressing the Likud Central Committee in April 2002, said,"The biggest mistake that can be made is to promise [the Palestinians] the establishment of their own independent state.” He explained why:

“We [would] want to ensure that such an entity does not receive more than self-rule. But it will demand all the powers of a state, such as controlling borders, bringing in weapons, control of airspace and the ability to knock down any Israeli plane that enters its area, [and] the ability to sign peace treaties and military alliances with other countries. Once you give them a state, you give them all these things, even if there is an agreement to the contrary, for within a short time they will demand all these things, and they will assume these powers, and the world will stand by and do nothing - but it *will* stop us from trying to stop them...

"We will thus have created with our own hands a threat to our very existence. On the day that we sign an agreement for a state with limited authorities, what will happen if the Palestinians do what the Germans did after World War I, when they nullified the demilitarized zone? The world did nothing then, and the world will do nothing now as well. Even now, the Palestinians are removing all the restrictions to which they agreed in Oslo – they are smuggling in arms, polluting the water sources, building an army, making military deals with Iran and others, and more…

"But when we try to take action against this, the world opposes us – and not them...  Arafat said it best when talking to reporters the day he signed the Oslo Accords: 'Since we can't defeat Israel in war, we must do it in stages, we must take whatever area of Palestine we can get, establish sovereignty there, and then at the right time, we will have to convince the Arab nations to join us in dealing the final blow to Israel.'

"We need not be concerned that the international community does not agree with us on this matter. Did the international community foresee the Holocaust? And if it did, did it do anything about it? Did it even lift a finger? It also did nothing about the threat to our existence that faced us from the Iraqi reactor – except to condemn us when Menachem Begin’s government destroyed it… On matters vital to our existence, we always took clear action, even if others didn’t agree with us. Because the bottom line is that saying 'Yes' to a Palestinian state means 'No' to a Jewish State – and vice-versa.”