Summary
Israeli politician who appears in Makdisi first as deputy foreign minister in 1989 regretting a missed chance for large-scale expulsions, and in the Epilogue as the newly elected prime minister whose June 2009 speech states the people/population hierarchy at the heart of the book’s argument (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.186, p.378).
Details
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In 1989, as deputy foreign minister, he regretted that Israel had not taken advantage of the world’s distraction by Tiananmen Square to carry out expulsions of Palestinians on a “large scale” (PDF p.186).
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His first major policy speech as prime minister, in June 2009, held that “the truth is that in the area of our homeland, in the heart of our Jewish Homeland, now lives a large population of Palestinians” — Jews a people with a right to a real state, Palestinians merely a “population” intruding on the Jewish homeland, with no rights Israel owes recognition in return (PDF p.378).
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It was not Netanyahu who unleashed the 2008-2009 Gaza bombardment: that was the “peace process” government’s work, under Ehud Barak as defense minister and Tzipi Livni as foreign minister, both of whom ran against Netanyahu as peace-process exponents (PDF p.378-379).
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His November 2009 ten-month partial settlement freeze excluded East Jerusalem and almost 3,000 housing units already underway; 28 new buildings in West Bank colonies were announced the day it took effect, settlements were added to “national priority areas” a fortnight later, and a further 700 East Jerusalem units followed: “This is a one-time decision and it is temporary,” Netanyahu said. “We will go back to building at the end of the freeze.” (PDF p.383)
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Falk records Netanyahu’s insistence that the Palestinian Authority must choose between what he calls “unity” (with Hamas) and “peace” (with Israel) (Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, PDF p.25-26).
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In the statehood-bid post, Netanyahu “almost comically suggested that the delay could last sixty years” for statehood through direct negotiations alone (PDF p.35).
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American subservience is named as subservience to “the Netanyahu–Lieberman governing coalition in Israel” (PDF p.43).
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The preconditions post: the Netanyahu-led government “is clearly committed to achieving the political embodiment of Greater Israel” and seeks legitimation for that expansionist objective (PDF p.53). His insistence on no preconditions for resumed negotiations “means no letup in settlement expansion, no lifting of the Gaza blockade, and the continuing abusive treatment of the West Bank population” (PDF p.57).
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Netanyahu’s Plan B, shared with Kerry, is Netanyahu’s economic peace, as he shamelessly calls it: persistence of occupation and status quo with materially better life for West Bank Palestinians (PDF p.59-60). His and Peres’s boycott of Nelson Mandela’s funeral is Falk’s exhibit of Israel’s loss of composure in the legitimacy struggle (PDF p.65-66).
Related pages
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Transfer, Demographic problem, Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, Two-state solution