Ambassador Oren Tells AIPAC Likud Supports Two States

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/04/ambassador-oren-tells-aipac-likud-supports-two-states.html

Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken consistent risks for peace. In 2009, when he got up at Bar Ilan University and made the two-state solution the official position of the Likud party, that was a risk. When he froze settlement growth for 10 months, that was a risk. When he got up and said in front of U.S. Congress that he understood that there’d be settlements beyond Israel’s borders in the event of the creation of a Palestinian state, that was a risk.
michael-oren-AIPAC-openz

In reality, though, none of these things have been terribly risky, because Netanyahu’s Likud party has shown through its follow-up that it’s never really taken the two-state solution seriously. In fact, as Lara Friedman detailed in a Peace Now report, “by every objective measure, the Netanyahu government has demonstrated that it is determined to use settlements to destroy the very possibility of the two-state solution.” That’s true of the Likud of the past—consider the fact that, during Netanyahu’s 10-month settlement “freeze,” construction never actually stopped, and was redoubled right after the freeze expired—and it’s even more true of Likud today. So much so, that the two-state solution can’t be considered the position of the Likud party in any meaningful way, despite what Oren would have AIPAC believe.

[oberliner]

1. Good to hear!

Let's hope this gets some momentum rolling in that direction.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

2. "Taken together, the facts that Oren conveniently glosses over

suggest that the two-state solution is neither the Likud’s official position, nor is it the unofficial narrative that party members have about themselves. Oren can talk all he wants about how committed Netanyahu has always been to a two-state solution, and how committed today’s Likud party still is. Someone in the AIPAC audience might even believe him. But I doubt a single Palestinian will."

[azurnoir]

3. there are 2 possibilities as to what the 2 states that Likud so supports are or will be

one a Palestinian State that is in reality a Palestinian only island completely surrounded by a Greater Israel, or at worst the 2 states already exist Israel and Jordan