From PM Netanyahu's Conference Call with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on July 21:"The simplest thing is to begin peace talks, unconditionally. I have offered that, We seek unconditional peace talks with the Palestinians. We're prepared to begin those talks immediately, and I'm prepared to work with the Palestinians, and of course with President Obama, towards advancing peace with the Palestinians, and towards advancing the President's idea of a broader peace in the region.
"....I think that we have to work on five principles that are not preconditions for beginning peace talks, but I think they are clear foundations for a successful completion of peace talks:
"....I think that we have to work on five principles that are not preconditions for beginning peace talks, but I think they are clear foundations for a successful completion of peace talks:
1)The first principle is recognition. We are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people. I think that it's necessary and elementary that the Palestinians be asked torecognize the nation-state of the Jewish people..... I think we have to be very,very clear. The Palestinians so far do not say simply, unequivocally andclearly that they recognize Israel as the Jewish state, a Jewish state notin the religious sense, but a Jewish state as the nation-state of the Jewish people. I think this is not a semantic insistence; it's a substantive insistence of which there is an immediate derivative.
2)The second principle - and that is that the problem of Palestinian refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel.You cannot say that you are prepared to make peace with Israel when you don't recognize Israel as the state of the Jews, and when you insist that thisstate will be flooded by Palestinian refugees. It just doesn't make sense.....
3)The third point ought to be obvious too, it all relates to the question of ending the conflict. And that is that a peace treaty actually ends the conflict. It's not an interim peace treaty from which the conflict is pursued from the Palestinian state that will be established. It's the end of the conflict. That is, the Palestinians upon the signing of a peace treaty have to say unequivocally that they have no more claims....
The other two points that I wanted to make relate to security. It's clear that the Palestinian state established should be one that doesn't threaten the State of Israel.
4)The only way that that will be achieved is by effective demilitarization -this is the fourth point. We need effective measures of demilitarization................ I'll tell you what ineffective measures of
demilitarization are: Gaza is an example; Lebanon is an example. There is no effective demilitarization in either place, and in fact, the arrangements that have been put in place, either in the Philadelphi Corridor or in South Lebanon have produced a highly ineffective arrangement where these two places are used as a launching ground for thousands of missiles that have been hurled against us - now in South Lebanon, tens of thousands of missilesare in place, and in Gaza many, many missiles that are being piled up and smuggled inside that area to be launched again. We want effective means of demilitarization....
5)And the fifth point is that whatever arrangements are undertaken in a peace arrangement, in a peace treaty, have to be guaranteed by the internationalcommunity, led by the United States. That is, we want to have clear demilitarization means and a clear commitment by the international community about the validity and the robustness of these security arrangements.
So these are the five points: recognition, the question of refugees, the end of claims, effective demilitarization means and international political guarantees for those arrangements. These are the five points that have a vast consensus in Israel, not broad consensus, not the majority - vast5)And the fifth point is that whatever arrangements are undertaken in a peace arrangement, in a peace treaty, have to be guaranteed by the internationalcommunity, led by the United States. That is, we want to have clear demilitarization means and a clear commitment by the international community about the validity and the robustness of these security arrangements.
consensus. And the reason they enjoy vast consensus, and I found this out after I spoke in Bar-Ilan - is because they're fair and because they're necessary. And because anybody who has a commonsense and decent approach to the question of peace understands that these are the five foundations, the five prerequisite foundations for completing a genuine peace treaty.