Jigs
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Israeli PM’s admission on how he deceived US likely to stir new row - Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review
The Israeli PM tells of how he deceived the US president into believing he was helping implement the Oslo peace process in a newly released video taped in 2001. Observers say he hasn’t changed since his comments nearly 10 years ago and that he plans to drag out the peace talks for as long as he can.
A newly released video of the Israeli prime minister, speaking in an unpolished manner in 2001 about relations with the United States and the peace process with Palestinians, is likely to cause some heartburn at the White House.
“I know what America is,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, apparently not knowing his words were being recorded. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in their way,” he said in Hebrew.
At one point on the tape, Netanyahu also threatens a “broad attack” against the Palestinian Authority. “The main thing, first of all, is to hit them. Not just one blow, but blows that are so painful that the price will be too heavy to be borne,” Netanyahu said. “A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority.”
The video, which was aired late last week on Israel's Channel 10 followed by several translations posted online, was shot during the early stages of the second Intifada, when violence between Israelis and Palestinians was escalating. Netanyahu was speaking with settlers who lost family members to Palestinian attacks.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time, had recently deployed additional Israeli troops in the West Bank.
Torpedoing peace process
Netanyahu, who did not hold a political office when the recording was made, makes a series of admissions about his first period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999.
Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the Jewish settlers that he deceived the U.S. president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was helping implement the Oslo accords, the U.S.-sponsored peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.
“They [Americans] asked me before the election if I'd honor [the Oslo accords],” he said. “I said I would, but ... I'm going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the '67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I'm concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.”
The Israeli prime minister also dismisses the U.S. as “easily moved to the right direction” and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel “absurd.”
He also suggests that, far from being defensive, Israel’s harsh military repression of the Palestinian uprising was designed chiefly to crush the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat so that it could be made more pliable for Israeli diktats.
He then recounts how he dealt with President Clinton, whom he refers to as “extremely pro-Palestinian.” Netanyahu added: “I wasn’t afraid to maneuver there. I was not afraid to clash with Clinton.”
Same stance today
Observers say all of Netanyahu’s remarks have obvious parallels with the current situation, with Netanyahu, as Israeli prime minister, facing off with a White House trying to draw him into a peace process that runs counter to his political agenda.
He has ostensibly made public concessions to the U.S. administration - chiefly by agreeing in principle to the creation of a Palestinian state, consenting to indirect talks with the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, and implementing a temporary freeze on settlement building. But he has also enlisted the powerful pro-Israel lobby to exert pressure on the White House, which appears to have relented on its most important stipulations.
Critics have already pointed out that his gestures have been extracted only after heavy arm-twisting from the U.S. administration.
Writing in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, the columnist Gideon Levy called the video “outrageous.” He said it proved that Netanyahu was a “con artist … who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes,” and that the prime minister had not reformed in the intervening period: “Such a crooked way of thinking does not change over the years.”
In early July, after meeting Obama in Washington, the Israeli prime minister gave an interview to Fox News in which he appeared to be in no hurry to make concessions: “Can we have a negotiated peace? Yes. Can it be implemented by 2012? I think it’s going to take longer than that,” he said.
The Israeli PM tells of how he deceived the US president into believing he was helping implement the Oslo peace process in a newly released video taped in 2001. Observers say he hasn’t changed since his comments nearly 10 years ago and that he plans to drag out the peace talks for as long as he can.
A newly released video of the Israeli prime minister, speaking in an unpolished manner in 2001 about relations with the United States and the peace process with Palestinians, is likely to cause some heartburn at the White House.
“I know what America is,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, apparently not knowing his words were being recorded. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in their way,” he said in Hebrew.
At one point on the tape, Netanyahu also threatens a “broad attack” against the Palestinian Authority. “The main thing, first of all, is to hit them. Not just one blow, but blows that are so painful that the price will be too heavy to be borne,” Netanyahu said. “A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority.”
The video, which was aired late last week on Israel's Channel 10 followed by several translations posted online, was shot during the early stages of the second Intifada, when violence between Israelis and Palestinians was escalating. Netanyahu was speaking with settlers who lost family members to Palestinian attacks.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time, had recently deployed additional Israeli troops in the West Bank.
Torpedoing peace process
Netanyahu, who did not hold a political office when the recording was made, makes a series of admissions about his first period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999.
Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the Jewish settlers that he deceived the U.S. president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was helping implement the Oslo accords, the U.S.-sponsored peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.
“They [Americans] asked me before the election if I'd honor [the Oslo accords],” he said. “I said I would, but ... I'm going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the '67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I'm concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.”
The Israeli prime minister also dismisses the U.S. as “easily moved to the right direction” and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel “absurd.”
He also suggests that, far from being defensive, Israel’s harsh military repression of the Palestinian uprising was designed chiefly to crush the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat so that it could be made more pliable for Israeli diktats.
He then recounts how he dealt with President Clinton, whom he refers to as “extremely pro-Palestinian.” Netanyahu added: “I wasn’t afraid to maneuver there. I was not afraid to clash with Clinton.”
Same stance today
Observers say all of Netanyahu’s remarks have obvious parallels with the current situation, with Netanyahu, as Israeli prime minister, facing off with a White House trying to draw him into a peace process that runs counter to his political agenda.
He has ostensibly made public concessions to the U.S. administration - chiefly by agreeing in principle to the creation of a Palestinian state, consenting to indirect talks with the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, and implementing a temporary freeze on settlement building. But he has also enlisted the powerful pro-Israel lobby to exert pressure on the White House, which appears to have relented on its most important stipulations.
Critics have already pointed out that his gestures have been extracted only after heavy arm-twisting from the U.S. administration.
Writing in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, the columnist Gideon Levy called the video “outrageous.” He said it proved that Netanyahu was a “con artist … who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes,” and that the prime minister had not reformed in the intervening period: “Such a crooked way of thinking does not change over the years.”
In early July, after meeting Obama in Washington, the Israeli prime minister gave an interview to Fox News in which he appeared to be in no hurry to make concessions: “Can we have a negotiated peace? Yes. Can it be implemented by 2012? I think it’s going to take longer than that,” he said.
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