The Facebook page of the Poleg Ir-Yamim neighborhood, in the coastal town of Netanya, is generally used to issue warnings about community hazards and to offer recommendations for plumbers and the like. This week, it was tainted by a political warning-cum-recommendation when Deputy Mayor Aharon Orgad of Kulanu shared his impressions of a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about preparations for the Sept. 17 election.
Given that the meeting with the 15 politicos had been closed to the public, Orgad apologized for having to scrimp on details, but still had to offer up some sort of tidbit: “You know what? Take one sentence from the meeting.… ‘Listen, in another two-three days, or another month or two, [President Donald] Trump’s peace plan will be published soon,’” Orgad wrote, quoting Netanyahu. ‘Now, I ask you — Whom would you want to see conducting negotiations on this plan?!’”
Obviously, the question was rhetorical given that Kulanu was recently subsumed by the Likud, and its 15 representatives are willing captives of Netanyahu. The Kulanu joiners, like their fellow Likud candidates, were also instructed on Aug. 4 to sign a pledge of allegiance to the Likud’s supreme leader, promising to support Netanyahu and Netanyahu alone to form the next government. The question the prime minister raised at the closed-door meeting should, however, trouble every Israeli voter who (still) holds out hope for an actual “deal of the century.”
Is Benjamin Netanyahu, indeed, a statesman worthy of conducting negotiations on a plan designed to bring about an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and terminate the suffering of both peoples? Is he willing to offer territorial concessions in the West Bank to enable the establishment of a demilitarized and viable Palestinian state? Is he willing to make the territorial concessions in the West Bank for which he has a partner in the most moderate of Palestinian camps? If the answer is “yes,” does he have the political power to discuss a compromise over East Jerusalem and its holy sites that would be acceptable to the most pragmatic of Muslim clerics?
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