US President Donald Trump’s team is taking a fresh approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that could offer some hope of progress after two-decades of stagnant attempts, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday, at an event at at Chatham House in London.
“They [Trump’s team] are trying to think out of the box. They did a quick and intensive study and they will eventually come out with something,” Netanyahu told the leading think tank’s chair Robin Niblett, who sat within him on a small stage and held a conversation about regional issues.
“I hope so,” Netanyahu responded. The peace process has been “stuck in the trough for 20 years,” Netanyahu said adding that the same conversation had probably taken place at Chatham House in the 1990s.
The dramatic shift in regional Israeli-Arab relations could give his initiative a chance for success, Netanyahu said.
While the bulk of the conversation focused on Iran, Netanyahu did go over some elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including the question of uprooting settlements.
In the last few months Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that he has no intention of evacuating settlements in the West Bank. Lately he has also pledged not to uproot Arab ones in Israel.
In London he explained that he thought it was hypocritical for the international community to demand that settlers must leave their homes, unless they similarly believed that Israeli-Arabs must leave their homes.
“Do I have to take out the Arab citizens in Israel because there can’t be peace? That’s crazy,” Netanyahu said.
“The whole notion that the international community bought [of evacuating settlers] so thoughtlessly goes against the whole notion of peace. You don’t apply it virtually anywhere else in the world, but you apply it to Jews who happen to live in a place where they have lived for 3,800 years?” Netanyahu asked.
There should be parity on this issue, he said.
“You never say it about northern Cyprus,” said Netanyahu adding that it is said thoughtlessly with regard to the settlers.
There is the assumption that “of course we have to take out the Jews,” he said.
Most followers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict agree that the settlement blocs would be within Israel’s final borders in a peace agreement, so the conversation of uprooting people centers on the isolated settlements, he said.
There is an expectation that Palestinians would agree that these small communities could be part of their state, “but they don’t,” Netanyahu said. “They [the Palestinians] insist on ethnic cleansing. This attitude that say, no Jews, ethnic cleansing, no state, no homeland. This is it, this is the problem,” said Netanyahu.
He continued to repeat his message that the Palestinian refusal to accept a Jewish state is the root of the conflict between the two peoples.
Netanyahu also made an argument for a demilitarized Palestinian state, explaining that sovereignty does not have to include a military power. “I think it is time that we reassess whether the model that we have of sovereignty and unfettered sovereignty is applicable all over the world,” Netanyahu said.
When describing the situation to Trump, Netanyahu said he showed him a map of how small the area of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley was, explaining that it was about the distance from the Trump tower to the George Washington Bridge.
Israel should be in charge of security for that area, he told the audience at Chatham House.
“I don’t want to govern the Arabs in the West Bank, but I want to make sure that the territory is not used against Israel,” he said.
“The Palestinians should have the power to govern themselves, but none of the powers to threaten us,” Netanyahu said.