Congresso americano ovacionou Netanyahu

The PM's peace plan, if that is the right phrase for the collection of unrealistic terms he presented to Congress, leads straight to the burial of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

By Akiva Eldar

WASHINGTON - Sara Netanyahu once said during a family gathering that if her husband had run for president of the United States, he would easily be elected (assuming, of course, that he were legally allowed to run). Indeed, in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address before both houses of Congress on Tuesday, he made impressive use of all the gimmicks of an experienced and sharp-tongued American politician.

The extent of the applause he received throughout his speech shows that the many years he spent in the United States as a high school, college and graduate student, as a deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and as an ambassador to the United Nations were not wasted time.






American politicians giving Benjamin Netanyahu a standing ovation, one of dozens, during his speech to Congress, May 24, 2011.
Netanyahu proved that he has no Israeli equal when it comes to plucking the strings of American patriotism, of guilt feelings over the Holocaust, and most of all, of the wish of Congress members to preserve their close ties with the large Jewish organizations. Lest we forget, the strength of the applause bears no relation to the genuine interests of the State of Israel.
Netanyahu's peace plan, if that is the right phrase for the collection of unrealistic terms he presented to Congress on Tuesday, leads straight to the burial of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, an international crisis and a UN declaration of a Palestinian state. In a bad scenario, these terms suggest that Netanyahu is ignorant of proposals placed before the Palestinians more than a decade ago. In an even worse scenario, the "far-reaching compromise" he describes proves that his relationship with the settlers and his partners on the extreme right (if not his own ideology ) is more important in Netanyahu's view than the strategic interests of Israel or the existence of a Jewish democratic state.
Netanyahu's plan does not even vaguely resemble the one proposed by then-President Bill Clinton in December 2000. A viable Palestinian state and Israel's annexation of settlements populated by 250,000 people are mutually exclusive. Even a magician the likes of Netanyahu cannot find the empty territory within Israel to compensate for the settlement blocs he wants left in Israel's hands.
Haaretz