Netanyahu Sets out on a Road to Nowhere

BYLINE: Ronnie Kasrils

Is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really offering Palestinians anything to work with?

What is heard is the strident voice of a "Doctor No". No freeze on settlement construction. No to Jerusalem as a shared capital. No right of return of the refugees. No end to the siege of Gaza or occupation of the West Bank. No acceptance even of the two-state solution. No sovereign borders or air space in a nebulous territory he can hardly bring himself to name.

What he has announced, Palestinian representatives say, is a series of conditions and qualifications that render a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian state impossible. This is no to peace, no to justice, no to security for Palestinians and Jews. It is a no to President Barack Obama if the American president is in fact serious about brokering a just solution.

For South Africans, Netanyahu's utterances are reminiscent of the worst days of apartheid when the dispossessed majority were warned to stay in their place and offered nothing but Bantustans. Netanyahu insists the Palestinians must accept Israel as the state of the Jewish people. This is of course integral to the Zionist myth claiming that only the Jews have rights to that land and ignoring the 20 percent Muslims who reside within Israel - never mind the rights of millions of Palestinians under military occupation or in refugee camps elsewhere. To accept the results of such dispossession and apartheid laws would have been tantamount to all …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Netanyahu Sets out on a Road to Nowhere. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: Cape Times (South Africa). Publication date: June 17, 2009. Page number: 11. © 2009 Independent News & Media PLC. COPYRIGHT 2009 Gale Group.

This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.