Israel’s extreme right government

The announced resignation of Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and, since 2007, the lacklustre official envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East is another indication that this 47-year-old hurdle will remain insurmountable.

As representative of the US, Russia, the EU and the UN, Blair has been unremarkable; he never spoke out about the obstacles he faced.

Although the Palestinians had welcomed his appointment a few months after his term as British prime minister ended, they lost faith in him soon after. He seemed too close to the Israelis — a characteristic of some other Western leaders.

The disappointing emergence last month of an extreme right-wing government in Israel, which has only a one-vote majority in the Israeli Knesset, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, shattered all hopes for a peace settlement in the near future, an endeavour in which US Secretary of State John Kerry was unfruitfully involved.

Judging by the view of key Israeli ministers, as recorded by interviews last weekend with The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth, the future does not seem very promising, prompting the Palestinians to seek the assistance of the United Nations.

Naftali Bennett, who Weymouth described as a “kind of kingmaker — able to influence Netanyahu’s policies in exchange for the majority that his party helps furnish”, is advocating that Israel “annex large parts of the West Bank”, an area on which a Palestinian state is envisage and which is only 22 per cent of the former British mandate. (Under the unfair UN Partition Plan, the Palestinian Jews were awarded 55 per cent of the Holy Land, especially the prosperous coastal region, with the Palestinians retaining the hilly regions.)

When he was reminded that he had once said “we’ll never give the land back to the Palestinians”, his response was “not back — away”.

“I don’t believe in giving up our land. I think it’s a profound mistake,” he said, claiming that “a large portion of Israelis have come to adopt my point of view, which is why Bibi effectively adopted my view during the recent elections”.

He also insisted that Israel will retain 60 per cent of the occupied West Bank, known as Area C, where many Israelis have settled after the 1967 war.

Bennett, who is now education minister, said he does not think “peace is achievable right now”.

Another outlandish Israeli view was voiced by a young political ally of Netanyahu’s, Tzipi Hotovely, the new deputy foreign minister.

In her inaugural speech to her staff, she maintained that she was on a mission to convince the world that Israel inherited the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories from God.

“This land is ours. All of it ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

Her statement assumedly spells out the views of the new Israeli government.

“We expect the international community to back up the demand of our prime minister to declare Israel as the Jewish national state. Moreover, we expect as a matter of principle that the international community recognise Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in the homeland everywhere.”

These Israeli aggressive views were in stark comparison to those uttered by Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, in the interview with The Washington Post, who expressed hope that he would be able to accomplish the establishment of “the Palestinian state with ’67 borders and East Jerusalem as its capital”.

He said: “We hope negotiations will be resumed, but within a new framework. We need a time limit for the Israeli withdrawal from our territories and a date for the establishment of the [Palestinian] state — the leadership in Palestine has put the date as the end of 2017.”

Hamdallah said that to guarantee the establishment of the state, the Palestinians would need a UN resolution to this effect because “we’ve experienced direct talks [with the Israelis], and they were a failure”.

His point: “The intervention of the UN and the superpower countries is important to convince Israel to reach a peaceful settlement.”

“If we get a peaceful settlement and an agreement with Israel, guaranteed by US and other countries, I’m sure we can live in paradise here — both of us,” he added.

Several influential American Jewish voices remain doubtful about Netanyahu’s intentions.

For example, Americans for Peace Now last week issued what has been described as an “emphatic statement”, saying that Netanyahu or his aides are “lying” and the US “should not enter into any negotiations with Israel but go to the United Nations now to push for a two-state solution along the lines of the Arab Peace Initiative”.

In other words, no one believes the shaky extreme right Israeli government that mistakenly thinks all are eager to rush to the negotiating table for another fruitless meeting.

More likely, all will be waiting for the results of the upcoming US-led big power negotiations with Iran over the latter’s nuclear ambitions.

If a deal is reached, the road will be wide open for an honourable Palestinian-Israeli settlement sanctioned by the UN.

The writer is a Washington-based columnist.