(Israelmatzav).Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman each met with American Special Middle East Envoy George Mitchell on Thursday. Netanyahu threw Mitchell a curveball: He said that Israel would be willing to talk about a two-state solution after the 'Palestinians' accept Israel as a Jewish state. That's a step that the 'Palestinians' are thus far unwilling to take.
Some of you may recall that Ehud Olmert made the same demand at Annapolis (albeit not as a precondition to discussing a 'two-state solution'), but the 'Palestinians' rejected it, because it would mean giving up their hopes of either recovering all of the land 'from the River to the Sea' and of flooding what remains of Israel after a 'two-state solution' with 'refugees' who would overwhelm Israel demographically.
While the Obama administration is unlikely to accept making 'Palestinian' acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state a precondition to negotiations on the 'two-state solution,' the argument is likely to strike a responsive cord in the halls of Congress and with those Americans who haven't been so blinded by 'hope and change' to disparage freedom and democracy. They are Netanyahu's audience.
