“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Revelations 3:15-16
The quote may be from the Christian New Testament, but no words better describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech last night than those above. A self-fashioned response to President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech of a week before, Netanyahu’s speech thrust himself firmly into lukewarm status, neither cold nor hot, neither wholly denying of peace nor ready to bring it about in full force.
Obama’s speech had a limited amount of clear policy – restrict settlements, recognize each other’s rights, two states – but an immense amount of goodwill and force to it. While he spoke for a middle ground – between Arabs and Jews, between Americans and the Middle East – he forged a clear and strong position. The exact means to his ends may be as of yet unclear, but we know where he’s going.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, staked out a modest concession to terms agreed by nearly all of his predecessors in the PM office: a demilitarized Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution. He demandedthat Jews accept that there is a large Palestinian population here, and that, “we do not want to rule over them.” It’s not a great leap to peace, but it signals that at the very least, Netanyahu is willing to get in the game. It’s also enough to anger the radical right wing in Israel, the ones who encourage signs of “Hussein, who are you?” with Obama’s face above the words, so that Netanyahu will have to spend as much time saving face with his coalition as attempting to placate Americans, Europeans and left wingers.
While he had a more defined policy, Netanyahu had a deficit of goodwill. The policy itself is difficult to swallow at the diplomatic table, with a unified Jerusalem for Israel, a relatively cold shoulder to the refugee problem, and continued settlement growth in the West Bank, but those aspects are at least negotiable. Netanyahu’s tactic to renew negotiations, however, is contradictory and off-putting.
“Let us begin peace negotiations immediately without prior conditions,” he said, only to say later that, “the fundamental condition for ending the conflict is the public, binding and sincere Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish People,” a condition to which Israel has so far been holding Palestinians as a prerequisite for negotiations.
And if indeed Netanyahu seeks to start these negotiations, his way of bringing his counterparts to the table is through shaming them. In his speech he correctly pointed out that violence in the region preceded 1967 and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Arabs did reject the partition plan of 1947, and withdrawals from Gaza in the past decade have led to rocket fire and war.
But by founding peace negotiations upon our past problems and fears, Netanyahu went beyond simple realism and fell into defeatist term-setting and playground dares. Perhaps this is an approach born of experience, but it’s also an approach that, without heavy revising and force behind it, will get the peace process nowhere.
The fact that Netanyahu made any concessions underscores the political urgency and opportunity of the current moment. Iran’s ensuing nuclear issues bind Arabs and Israelis with common fear. A moderate current felt with the results of Lebanon’s election, encouraged by an Egyptian-Saudi Arabian power axis that, at least with Mubarak, senses time running short, offers a starting point with the Arab Peace Initiative. And Obama gives an overall vision and momentum to the Middle East Arena.
What is discouraging, then, is not that Netanyahu didn’t make enough concessions, or that he failed to be significant or even grand enough in his speech. The problem is that Netanyahu still struggles to understand that there is not only another side to this process, but that they have their pride, and for them to reach compromise with Israel, it will have to be done through a growth in understanding and respect. So far, Netanyahu has not shown that understanding, and especially not that respect.
The middle is where all sides must meet, whether it’s through Arab citizens rejecting extremists in their own midst via legal means, Obama fulfilling his vision as the Great Unifier, or Palestinians and Jews coming to some sort of terms. That is the essence of politics and diplomacy.
This middle must, however, be assumed by will and strength, not by hedging, fear, and ambiguity. Netanyahu has begun that long journey to the middle, but so far, he has been tepid. Lukewarm. We’re left to hope he gets hot before the facts on the ground make him irrelevant and all hopes of peace in the near future go with him.