Is Netanyahu Becoming Illegitimate?

Ted Belman at Israpundit notes:

PM Netanyahu issued the following statement as payment or part payment for the exercise of the US veto.

“Israel deeply appreciates the decision by President [Barack] Obama to veto the Security Council resolution today. Israel remains committed to pursuing comprehensive peace with all our neighbors, including the Palestinians. We seek a solution that will reconcile the Palestinians’ legitimate aspiration for statehood with Israel’s need for security and recognition.”

No longer is he claiming defensible borders, a united Jerusalem or the settlement blocks. Not only is he not asserting our legal rights, he is also not asserting our historical rights. The fact that he has maintained a defacto freeze and that the Cabinet Committee voted unanimously to not extend Israeli law to the communities in Judea and Samaria, says volumes.

If you think that's a misquote, here's the source Ted doesn't provide.

Menachem Begin, in signing the The Framework for Peace in the Middle East

agreement of the Camp David Accords, opened the way for the use of that term.  In A c., it reads:

The solution from the negotiations must also recognize the legitimate right of the Palestinian peoples and their just requirements

I recall that he once responded to criticism by saying: 'for sure they have legitimate rights but creating a state is not one of them'.  He pointed out that the plural, "peoples", indicate the Arabs as individuals, as persons, but not as a people in the national sense.

He must assuredly was opposed to statehood.

In the book I edited, you can find these words of Begin written in August 1980:

...The Egyptian delegate made a speech at the United Nations in which he said, inter alia:


...iii) "The Palestinian people should exercise, without any external interference, the inalienable and fundamental right to self-determination, including the right to establish an independent state on the West Bank and Gaza.

Thus, the Egyptian delegate to the United Nations.

However, not one word about self-determination (which, of course, means a state), or about an independent (Palestinian) state appears in any one of the pages, paragraphs, sections, sub-sections etc. of the Camp David agreement. Dr. Ghali, speaking of behalf of Egypt, committed almost incomprehensible deviations from, and total contradictions, to, the Camp David accord which you and I signed and which our friend President Carter signed as witness, and which all of us are obligated to carry out in good faith in accordance with the old golden rule: Pacta sunt servanda. It is not Israel, Mr. President, which commits a breach of our peace treaty of the other, not yet fulfilled, part of the Camp David agreement; spokesmen of Egypt, of various levels, do...


...Jerusalem is and will be one, under Israel's sovereignty, its indivisible capital in which Jews and Arabs will dwell together in peace and in human dignity. Whosoever declares that the sovereign acts of our democratic Parliament are null and void makes a declaration which is null and void.  The same applies to our settlements in Judea, Samaria, the Gaza District and the Golan Heights. They are legal and legitimate and they are an integral part of our national security. None of them will ever be removed.

It would seem that Prime Minister Netanyahu needs to read the book, "Peace in the Making".

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