As The World Seeks Unity Against ISIS, Netanyahu Finds Ways To Sow Division
By Tod Robberson / Editorial Writer
I had a vague hope that, somehow, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would recognize that the threat posed by the Islamic State’s sweep through Iraq and Syria is unlike anything the world has seen from a Muslim militant group, and that he would find a way to speak for world unity in the fight to defeat ISIS.
Instead, he seemed to work extra hard to exaggerate, misstate and deflect in ways that ensured Arab states would actively avoid any semblance of unity with Israel in the common goal of defeating Islamic extremism. Given the horrors we’ve all seen committed by ISIS, it wouldn’t have taken much to rally the world to a cause Israel and virtually all Arab states share. But when you wrap yourself in so many barbed remarks in your U.N. General Assembly speech, don’t expect the world to give you a hug.
Netanyahu had the gall to stand before the very body whose 1947 resolution led to the partition of Palestine and creation of Israel, and tell that body that Israel is not occupying foreign territory. Israel does not “occupy” the land of Israel, he said. Meaning that Israel thinks it owns the West Bank and therefore has no obligation to withdraw from it.
Why did he have to say this? Couldn’t he have avoided the subject altogether? Could he have offered something substantive in the way of working toward a two-state solution — a solution he supports? He told ABC News just last week: “Yes, I do believe in two states for two peoples. No, we don’t expand the actual land involved, which is actually quite small. This is our historic homeland. We have our claims, the Palestinians have their claims and we should be sitting around a table and negotiating it.”
OK, why not state it like that before the U.N. General Assembly? Instead, he chose the most abrasive way possible to denigrate the U.N. and denigrate the idea that Israel should be talking to anyone.
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