Israel gets up off its knees

    Well, well. Two days into the new Netanyahu government, and Israel gets up off its knees. First off, Netanyahu tells Obama ‘Stop Iran or we will’. Then Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in his maiden speech restores the all-but forgotten notion that people must actually adhere to their agreements. You want two states, he says? Fine. Israel will work towards that – but there is already an agreement on the table, called the Road Map, which sets out the steps that must be followed, one by one, to achieve that end:

Israel will adhere to every step; so must the Palestinians: We will adhere to it to the letter, exactly as written. Clauses one, two, three, four – dismantling terrorist organizations, establishing an effective government, making a profound constitutional change in the Palestinian authority. We will proceed exactly according to our clauses. We are also obligated to implement what is required of us in each clause, but so is the other side.

The brilliance of this proposition is that it calls the bluff of those who blame Israel for the failure to proceed to a two-state settlement – ignoring completely the fact that the Road Map process broke down because the Palestinians failed to implement a single one of their requirements. In other words, Lieberman has recalled people sharply to reality.

He also put the Middle East impasse in its correct perspective in a very sharp rebuke to a world which has lost the plot:

The claim that what is threatening the world today is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a way of evading reality. The reality is that the problems are coming from the direction of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq... We have proven our desire for  peace more than any other country in the world. No country has made concessions the way Israel has. Since 1977, we have given up areas of land three times the size of the State of Israel. So we have proven the point.

... When was Israel at its strongest in terms of public opinion around the world? After the victory of the Six Day War, not after all the concessions in Oslo Accords I, II, III and IV. Anyone who wants to maintain his status in public opinion must understand that if he wants respect, he must first respect himself.

Lieberman is a controversial politician who has been called a fascist. Such a speech will undoubtedly attract yet more name-calling. But the fact is that it’s been a very long time since an Israeli politician has stood up to the world’s amoral bullying in this way by the novel expedient of actually telling truth to power instead of scrabbling in disarray before it. Israel has now thrown down a gauntlet. It will be interesting to see how America responds.