Netanyahu says Israel will never withdraw to 1967 borders.
It is so annoying that the U.S. corporate media decides that big news doesn't exist and non-news is big news. The New York Times, for example, has gone six days without any news from Iraq (where the U.S. is spending 10 billion dollars a month). But more immediately, the coverage this week about Israel and Palestine includes an article about the start of former Israeli President Ehud Olmert's corruption trial, but not even a reference to current Premier Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement that Israel will never withdraw to the 1967 borders. In fact, I could only find a report of the interview in the Turkish Weekly.
Recall what Obama said after his meeting with Netanyahu in Washington: that the resolution of the Israeli-Palestine crisis must include "a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967." This has been broadly interpreted as a call by the U.S. for Israel to ultimately withdraw from the occupied territories.
In response to this, Netanyahu told Haaretz:
"The things he [Obama] said about the occupation are not new. He also said them in Cairo, and in fact that is the formula adopted by the road map and it does not say we have to go back to the 1967 borders.
"This is the formula adopted by [Israeli] governments before the one I head, which did not agree to go back to the 1967 borders. We certainly would [also] not agree to that. In the matter of the settlements he also said nothing new. These disagreements should not prevent the beginning of the process which, among other things if it is successful, will also decide this issue."
This is convoluted, but very clear: Neither the earlier Israeli governments, nor Netanyahu would ever agree "to go back to the 1967 borders." They are going to keep all or part of the land they seized, despite the world consensus that this seizure, occupation, and ethnic cleansing was illegal and immoral, and an ongoing devastation to the lives of Palestinians.
It is simply staggering that both the U.S. government and the U.S. media simply ignores these provocative and incendiary commitments, while continuing to condemn any little provocative statement by any Palestinian political grouping.
In some sense, this is a litmus test for the Obama administration. With Netanyahu drawing a line in the sand, will Obama do something to challenge this? Or will he tacitly or explicitly support an Israeli policy that guarantees years or even decades of further misery, violence, and instability.
I am afraid to reach the obvious conclusion suggested by the deafening silence in Washington and in the U.S. corporate media.