"The root of this conflict never was a Palestinian state, or lack thereof. The root of the conflict is, and always has been, their refusal to recognize the Jewish state..." (PM Netanyahu, Knesset May 16 2011).
(Haaretz,Ynet).he foreign ministers of the Middle East Quartet failed to reach an agreement on Monday surrounding the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and therefore did not issue a public statement on their meeting meant to renew Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Western diplomats and senior officials in Jerusalem said Tuesday.
"The goal was to give each side something that was important to them," a Western diplomat said. "The Palestinians were supposed to get 1967 borders with land swaps and the Israelis wanted to receive in return the recognition of Israel as the Jewish homeland, but there was no agreement on this matter."
A senior Israeli official said that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took mostly pro-Palestinians positions in the Quartet talks and would not allow the inclusion of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the concluding statement of the meeting.
Officials say the Palestinian Authority opposed a Quartet demand to withdraw their plan to declare statehood unilaterally at the UN in September.
The Palestinians also refuse to halt all demands from Israel once a peace deal is signed, and oppose demands to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people as well as to modify their education to cease all enmity towards the state, sources say.
