Post by Paddy by Grace on Jun 16, 2009 22:05:32 GMT -7
Haaretz poll: Netanyahu approval rating leaps after policy speech
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093234.html
U.S. President Barack Obama has reservations, the Arabs are protesting and the Europeans are doubtful, but for the Israeli public, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech on Sunday evening was a big success. Right and left, Kadima and Likud, new immigrants and old-timers all found something they liked in the address at Bar-Ilan University.
For example, in only a month, Netanyahu's approval rating has jumped 16 percentage points from a low of 28 percent the day after the cabinet debate over the budget on May 14. The 44 percent achieved yesterday comes a day after the speech.
Public support for Netanyahu's speech is sky-high, even though Israelis do not have illusions about the prime minister's motives, which they generally attribute to American pressure. But it turns out that Israelis prefer a prime minister who does the right thing even if he does it for the wrong reasons.
Advertisement
And most of the public thinks the right thing is the combination found in Netanyahu's address: right-wing rhetoric mixed with the desire for peace, an undivided Jerusalem, opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees, a demand for defensible borders, and the words that made the big headline - a demilitarized Palestinian state.
Netanyahu hit a bull's-eye in the Israeli public consensus with his speech. This is reflected in the results of a Haaretz-Dialog survey conducted yesterday under the auspices of Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University. The numbers show that when Netanyahu deals with leadership on defense and policy matters without scare tactics, the public supports him.
But when he is judged on his actions, such as after the budget debacle, the public is not supportive. The conclusion: Netanyahu needs to operate less and lead more. Another conclusion is that maybe he should speak to the public more often, on condition that he says what the public wants to hear.
The Israeli public overwhelmingly supports Netanyahu's speech - 71 percent. According to the poll, the prime minister said the right things and the television event Sunday night will help Israel in the international arena.
However, these positive views do not blind Israelis; they do not believe there will be any real change in the region as a result of the speech. A large majority of Israelis surveyed say the peace process will not see any breakthrough in the wake of the address, and an even larger majority says a demilitarized Palestinian state will not be established in the next few years, as Netanyahu himself now supports.
Netanyahu built a broad consensus in his speech, the survey shows. He will use this support to maneuver his policies with the Americans.
In terms of internal Israeli politics, Netanyahu put himself in the center of the political map. Most Kadima voters, 49 percent, say Tzipi Livni should join the coalition as a result of the speech, while 37 percent of Kadima voters disagreed.
Likud and Labor voters also now broadly support Kadima joining Netanyahu's government, even though his coalition seems more stable than ever.
Another political achievement is how Netanyahu managed to keep onside his own political base, Likud, even as he added supporters from other parties, mostly Labor and Kadima.
The survey shows that 90 percent of Likud voters, an incredible figure, agreed with what Netanyahu said in his speech. Maybe they are aware that a Palestinian state will not emerge as a result, so they are not worried. In addition, 73 percent of Likud voters say Netanyahu said the right things.
The public liked the speech not just because it was based on the Israeli consensus, but also because of its tone: moderate with a desire for peace and casting the blame for a lack of peace on the Arabs.
==========================================
Netanyahu Lays Out Conditions for Palestinian State, Offers Obama History Pointers
www.worthynews.com/top/cnsnews-com-public-content-article-aspx-RsrcID-49552/
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu can wait a thousand years without finding a single Palestinian prepared to accept his offer, a senior Palestinian negotiator said late Sunday after Netanyahu in a policy speech laid down conditions under which Israel would accept a Palestinian state.
The two key conditions, the conservative prime minister said, were Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national homeland for the Jewish people; and a requirement that a future Palestinian state would be demilitarized.
Acceptance of a Palestinian state is a departure for Netanyahu. Speaking at Bar Ilan University outside Tel Aviv, he made it clear that it came with red lines.
On the first, Netanyahu said, refusal to recognize the Jewish people’s right to a state in their historical homeland was “the root of the conflict.” The “public, binding and sincere” acknowledgment by the Palestinians of that right was therefore a “fundamental condition for ending the conflict.”
On the second condition, Netanyahu said there was broad agreement in Israel that a future Palestinian state could not be militarized.
“Without this condition, there is a real fear that there will be an armed Palestinian state which will become a terrorist base against Israel, as happened in Gaza,” he said.
Such a state – “another Hamastan” – could makes military treaties with Iran or Hezbollah and import weapons and missiles.
A Palestinian state could have no army, and no control over its airspace, and effective measures would have to be put in place to prevent arms from entering, Netanyahu said.
On two other key final status questions, he said Jerusalem would remain Israel’s unified capital, and Palestinian refugees could not be settled within Israel’s future borders. Netanyahu recalled that as the young and “tiny” state of Israel had absorbed “hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were uprooted from their homes.” The problem of Arab refugees could similarly be solved, he said, implying that the refugees could be accommodated in the Palestinian state and/or neighboring Arab countries.
The Palestinian Authority wants at least the eastern portion of Jerusalem as the capital of a future state; the “right of return” of Arabs who left what is now Israel in 1948, and their descendants, is another key P.A. demand.
On the issue of Israelis living in disputed areas, Netanyahu pledged that no new settlements would be built. But he pointedly did not agree that construction would stop within existing ones – a matter of disagreement with the Obama administration.
“There is a need to have people live normal lives and let mothers and fathers raise their children like everyone in the world,” he said. “The settlers are not enemies of peace. They are our brothers and sisters.”
More than 280,000 Israelis live in settlements in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank). President Bush in a letter to the Israeli government in 2004 acknowledged that the final status borders of Israel would have to take into account “new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers.” The Obama administration has sidestepped the question of whether it considers that and other assurances in the Bush letter to be binding.
This is the birthplace of the Jewish people’
Sunday’s speech was viewed in Israel as a response to some of the points made in President Obama’s address to the “Muslim world,” delivered in Cairo early this month. Obama pressed the Israelis to accept a “two state solution” to the conflict and said it was time for Jewish settlements to “stop.”
P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said Netanyahu’s speech “torpedoes” peace initiatives, while P.A. negotiator Saeb Erekat called it “deceiving,” adding that the prime minister “can wait one thousand years to find one single Palestinian who accepts his plans mentioned in his speech.”
In remarks directed to Obama, Erekat said Netanyahu’s speech was a slap in the president’s face.
“Netanyahu is challenging you and insists not stopping settlements or ending the military occupation,” he said. “President Obama, the ball is in your court tonight.”
The settlement issue is not the only one covered in Netanyahu’s speech that constituted a reproach to the administration.
Although the White House in a statement praised “the important step forward” in the speech – presumably Netanyahu’s conditional endorsement of a future Palestinian state – a close reading of the speech finds a number of gentle ripostes.
In Cairo on June 4, Obama suggested that Jewish aspirations that led to the establishment of Israel in 1948 were “rooted” in a “tragic history” of anti-Semitic persecution that culminated in the Holocaust.
While agreeing that the Holocaust showed why Jews needed a “protective state,” Netanyahu highlighted the 3,000 year-old Jewish connection to the land of Israel.
“The right of the Jewish people to a state in the Land of Israel does not arise from the series of disasters that befell the Jewish people over 2,000 years – persecutions, expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, murders, which reached its climax in the Holocaust,” he said. “The right to establish our sovereign state here, in the Land of Israel, arises from one simple fact: Eretz Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people.”
The assertion that the Holocaust led to the creation of Israel is frequently used by its
Israel’s critics frequently argue that Europe assuaged its “guilt” over the Nazi genocide by giving the survivors a homeland, at the expense of the Arab inhabitants, and that that alone – rather than any historic or legal claim – was the reason for the creation of Israel. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, despite disputing the Holocaust, has suggested that the Israelis be moved to Europe to make up for “injustice” Jews experienced there.
Arab rejectionism
Obama also did not mention the fact that the establishment of Israel arose out of a 1947 decision by the United Nations to divide the land between Jews and Arabs. The Jews assented, declaring a state; the Arabs refused the deal, and went to war.
Netanyahu filled in the gap.
“The entire Arab world rejected the [U.N.] proposal, while the Jewish community accepted it with great rejoicing and dancing,” he recounted. “The Arabs refused any Jewish state whatsoever, with any borders whatsoever.”
In Cairo, Obama echoed the widely-held view that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 was the reason for Arab and Muslim enmity towards Israel.
Netanyahu countered: “Whoever thinks that the continued hostility to Israel is a result of our forces in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is confusing cause and effect,” he said. “The attacks on us began in the 1920s, became an overall attack in 1948 when the state was declared, continued in the 1950s with the fedayeen attacks, and reached their climax in 1967 on the eve of the Six-Day War, with the attempt to strangle Israel.
“All this happened nearly 50 years before a single Israeli soldier went into Judea and Samaria” in 1967, he said.
Elsewhere in the speech, Netanyahu praised Egypt and Jordan for signing peace agreements with Israel and invited Israel’s remaining neighbors to join the “circle of peace,” saying he was ready to travel to Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to talk about and make peace.
He also challenged the Arabs to join Israel in promoting “economic peace” – not as a substitute for peace, but as “a very important component in achieving it: “Together we can advance projects that can overcome the problems facing our region.”
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093234.html
U.S. President Barack Obama has reservations, the Arabs are protesting and the Europeans are doubtful, but for the Israeli public, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech on Sunday evening was a big success. Right and left, Kadima and Likud, new immigrants and old-timers all found something they liked in the address at Bar-Ilan University.
For example, in only a month, Netanyahu's approval rating has jumped 16 percentage points from a low of 28 percent the day after the cabinet debate over the budget on May 14. The 44 percent achieved yesterday comes a day after the speech.
Public support for Netanyahu's speech is sky-high, even though Israelis do not have illusions about the prime minister's motives, which they generally attribute to American pressure. But it turns out that Israelis prefer a prime minister who does the right thing even if he does it for the wrong reasons.
Advertisement
And most of the public thinks the right thing is the combination found in Netanyahu's address: right-wing rhetoric mixed with the desire for peace, an undivided Jerusalem, opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees, a demand for defensible borders, and the words that made the big headline - a demilitarized Palestinian state.
Netanyahu hit a bull's-eye in the Israeli public consensus with his speech. This is reflected in the results of a Haaretz-Dialog survey conducted yesterday under the auspices of Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University. The numbers show that when Netanyahu deals with leadership on defense and policy matters without scare tactics, the public supports him.
But when he is judged on his actions, such as after the budget debacle, the public is not supportive. The conclusion: Netanyahu needs to operate less and lead more. Another conclusion is that maybe he should speak to the public more often, on condition that he says what the public wants to hear.
The Israeli public overwhelmingly supports Netanyahu's speech - 71 percent. According to the poll, the prime minister said the right things and the television event Sunday night will help Israel in the international arena.
However, these positive views do not blind Israelis; they do not believe there will be any real change in the region as a result of the speech. A large majority of Israelis surveyed say the peace process will not see any breakthrough in the wake of the address, and an even larger majority says a demilitarized Palestinian state will not be established in the next few years, as Netanyahu himself now supports.
Netanyahu built a broad consensus in his speech, the survey shows. He will use this support to maneuver his policies with the Americans.
In terms of internal Israeli politics, Netanyahu put himself in the center of the political map. Most Kadima voters, 49 percent, say Tzipi Livni should join the coalition as a result of the speech, while 37 percent of Kadima voters disagreed.
Likud and Labor voters also now broadly support Kadima joining Netanyahu's government, even though his coalition seems more stable than ever.
Another political achievement is how Netanyahu managed to keep onside his own political base, Likud, even as he added supporters from other parties, mostly Labor and Kadima.
The survey shows that 90 percent of Likud voters, an incredible figure, agreed with what Netanyahu said in his speech. Maybe they are aware that a Palestinian state will not emerge as a result, so they are not worried. In addition, 73 percent of Likud voters say Netanyahu said the right things.
The public liked the speech not just because it was based on the Israeli consensus, but also because of its tone: moderate with a desire for peace and casting the blame for a lack of peace on the Arabs.
==========================================
Netanyahu Lays Out Conditions for Palestinian State, Offers Obama History Pointers
www.worthynews.com/top/cnsnews-com-public-content-article-aspx-RsrcID-49552/
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu can wait a thousand years without finding a single Palestinian prepared to accept his offer, a senior Palestinian negotiator said late Sunday after Netanyahu in a policy speech laid down conditions under which Israel would accept a Palestinian state.
The two key conditions, the conservative prime minister said, were Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national homeland for the Jewish people; and a requirement that a future Palestinian state would be demilitarized.
Acceptance of a Palestinian state is a departure for Netanyahu. Speaking at Bar Ilan University outside Tel Aviv, he made it clear that it came with red lines.
On the first, Netanyahu said, refusal to recognize the Jewish people’s right to a state in their historical homeland was “the root of the conflict.” The “public, binding and sincere” acknowledgment by the Palestinians of that right was therefore a “fundamental condition for ending the conflict.”
On the second condition, Netanyahu said there was broad agreement in Israel that a future Palestinian state could not be militarized.
“Without this condition, there is a real fear that there will be an armed Palestinian state which will become a terrorist base against Israel, as happened in Gaza,” he said.
Such a state – “another Hamastan” – could makes military treaties with Iran or Hezbollah and import weapons and missiles.
A Palestinian state could have no army, and no control over its airspace, and effective measures would have to be put in place to prevent arms from entering, Netanyahu said.
On two other key final status questions, he said Jerusalem would remain Israel’s unified capital, and Palestinian refugees could not be settled within Israel’s future borders. Netanyahu recalled that as the young and “tiny” state of Israel had absorbed “hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were uprooted from their homes.” The problem of Arab refugees could similarly be solved, he said, implying that the refugees could be accommodated in the Palestinian state and/or neighboring Arab countries.
The Palestinian Authority wants at least the eastern portion of Jerusalem as the capital of a future state; the “right of return” of Arabs who left what is now Israel in 1948, and their descendants, is another key P.A. demand.
On the issue of Israelis living in disputed areas, Netanyahu pledged that no new settlements would be built. But he pointedly did not agree that construction would stop within existing ones – a matter of disagreement with the Obama administration.
“There is a need to have people live normal lives and let mothers and fathers raise their children like everyone in the world,” he said. “The settlers are not enemies of peace. They are our brothers and sisters.”
More than 280,000 Israelis live in settlements in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank). President Bush in a letter to the Israeli government in 2004 acknowledged that the final status borders of Israel would have to take into account “new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers.” The Obama administration has sidestepped the question of whether it considers that and other assurances in the Bush letter to be binding.
This is the birthplace of the Jewish people’
Sunday’s speech was viewed in Israel as a response to some of the points made in President Obama’s address to the “Muslim world,” delivered in Cairo early this month. Obama pressed the Israelis to accept a “two state solution” to the conflict and said it was time for Jewish settlements to “stop.”
P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said Netanyahu’s speech “torpedoes” peace initiatives, while P.A. negotiator Saeb Erekat called it “deceiving,” adding that the prime minister “can wait one thousand years to find one single Palestinian who accepts his plans mentioned in his speech.”
In remarks directed to Obama, Erekat said Netanyahu’s speech was a slap in the president’s face.
“Netanyahu is challenging you and insists not stopping settlements or ending the military occupation,” he said. “President Obama, the ball is in your court tonight.”
The settlement issue is not the only one covered in Netanyahu’s speech that constituted a reproach to the administration.
Although the White House in a statement praised “the important step forward” in the speech – presumably Netanyahu’s conditional endorsement of a future Palestinian state – a close reading of the speech finds a number of gentle ripostes.
In Cairo on June 4, Obama suggested that Jewish aspirations that led to the establishment of Israel in 1948 were “rooted” in a “tragic history” of anti-Semitic persecution that culminated in the Holocaust.
While agreeing that the Holocaust showed why Jews needed a “protective state,” Netanyahu highlighted the 3,000 year-old Jewish connection to the land of Israel.
“The right of the Jewish people to a state in the Land of Israel does not arise from the series of disasters that befell the Jewish people over 2,000 years – persecutions, expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, murders, which reached its climax in the Holocaust,” he said. “The right to establish our sovereign state here, in the Land of Israel, arises from one simple fact: Eretz Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish people.”
The assertion that the Holocaust led to the creation of Israel is frequently used by its
Israel’s critics frequently argue that Europe assuaged its “guilt” over the Nazi genocide by giving the survivors a homeland, at the expense of the Arab inhabitants, and that that alone – rather than any historic or legal claim – was the reason for the creation of Israel. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, despite disputing the Holocaust, has suggested that the Israelis be moved to Europe to make up for “injustice” Jews experienced there.
Arab rejectionism
Obama also did not mention the fact that the establishment of Israel arose out of a 1947 decision by the United Nations to divide the land between Jews and Arabs. The Jews assented, declaring a state; the Arabs refused the deal, and went to war.
Netanyahu filled in the gap.
“The entire Arab world rejected the [U.N.] proposal, while the Jewish community accepted it with great rejoicing and dancing,” he recounted. “The Arabs refused any Jewish state whatsoever, with any borders whatsoever.”
In Cairo, Obama echoed the widely-held view that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 was the reason for Arab and Muslim enmity towards Israel.
Netanyahu countered: “Whoever thinks that the continued hostility to Israel is a result of our forces in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is confusing cause and effect,” he said. “The attacks on us began in the 1920s, became an overall attack in 1948 when the state was declared, continued in the 1950s with the fedayeen attacks, and reached their climax in 1967 on the eve of the Six-Day War, with the attempt to strangle Israel.
“All this happened nearly 50 years before a single Israeli soldier went into Judea and Samaria” in 1967, he said.
Elsewhere in the speech, Netanyahu praised Egypt and Jordan for signing peace agreements with Israel and invited Israel’s remaining neighbors to join the “circle of peace,” saying he was ready to travel to Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to talk about and make peace.
He also challenged the Arabs to join Israel in promoting “economic peace” – not as a substitute for peace, but as “a very important component in achieving it: “Together we can advance projects that can overcome the problems facing our region.”