There were times when such an announcement by the leader of a right-wing Israeli government would have made front-page headlines: “I am ready now to go to Ramallah or any other place to meet and hold direct negotiations.” This, according to an announcement issued by the prime minister’s office, is what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told representatives of Women Wage Peace on Sept. 1. The prime minister even asked his guests, should they meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to convey him the message that he was willing to renew direct negotiations with him.
There were times when the words “the solution is two states for two people” would have spoiled the media festival over the opening of the school year for Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the HaBayit HaYehudi Party and Netanyahu’s coalition partner. On the left, no one even bothered issuing a reaction to the obvious contradiction between the prime minister’s willingness to launch negotiations “without preconditions,” and the unrealistic condition that he stated in the same breath at that meeting, according to which the Palestinian state would recognize Israel as “the national state of the Jewish people.” And, of course, not a word about a freeze on settlement building in the West Bank.