The March 3 speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the US Congress is expected to focus on the Iranian threat, but the Israeli public — and the American one, for that matter — probably also expect to hear a few words on the “Palestinian threat.” The premier and Likud Party chair must clarify his actual stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Is it the position he expressed less than three years ago from the same congressional podium, or what he says today at home?

Indeed, in his loudly praised May 2011 speech, Netanyahu declared, “In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders.” To prevent any misunderstandings, the prime minister promised, “We will be very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state … I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace.” Netanyahu has used the word ''peace'' in his congressional addresses no fewer than 64 times. Today, it seems, the word has been eliminated from the vocabulary of the ruling party's upper echelons.

At an election rally in the southern town of Kiryat Gat Feb. 5, less than a month before his scheduled speech to Congress, Netanyahu wondered aloud, “What will happen to each piece of land from which we withdraw?” His responded, “It would be taken over by radical Islam,” an answer that he has been repeating in almost all his recent public appearances. This fatalist approach is the complete opposite of his placating 2011 congressional speech about evacuating settlements and achieving a historic peace.

Not only that, but in the 2011 speech Netanyahu presented the recalcitrance of the Palestinian Authority as the main if not only obstacle to achieving a peace arrangement. “All six prime ministers since the signing of the Oslo Accord, myself included, agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state,” the prime minister said. “So why was peace not achieved?” His answer: “Because up to now, the Palestinians have rejected an arrangement for a Palestinian state as long as they have to agree to a Jewish state at its side.” Netanyahu promised that “the face of history will be changed” if only Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas tells his people these words: “I will accept a Jewish state.”