The May 20 meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and EU High Commissioner for Foreign and Security Affairs Federica Mogherini raised heart rates among advocates of the two-state solution.

The almost total silence in reaction to reports that Netanyahu had suggested to his guest from Brussels that Israelis and Palestinians negotiate the boundaries of the settlement blocs should diminish their optimism and make them face the reality of Netanyahu’s coalition. If the settlers and their representatives in the Knesset and government had thought for a minute that the Palestinians might respond favorably to the new proposal, they would not have sat idle. But Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon apparently understand that the Palestinians will not agree to delineating the borders of the settlements instead of drawing the map of Palestine, with the inclusion of East Jerusalem. It doesn’t take a law professor to understand that Palestinian resignation to the existence of the settlements would indirectly admit their legitimacy and deprive them of their central arguments against Israel at the International Criminal Court. The bait thrown their way through Mogherini was too transparent and too late.

This was not the first time that Netanyahu has thrown a bone to the international community and the media, tempting them to imagine meat on it. It will also not be the last. Even as Mogherini was coming out of the meeting, the diplomatic correspondents rushed to report to the nation that Netanyahu supports a regional peace initiative. No, he’s not referring to the Arab Peace Initiative awaiting Israel since 2002, with its proposal of an Israeli withdrawal from the territories in return for normalization of relations with the Arab states. The prime minister noted that the Arab Spring and the rise of the Islamic State have completely changed the regional picture — as though he had supported the initiative in the past, and as if to this very day he weren't working to undermine the Oslo Accord.

As far as we know, Netanyahu’s soothing words generated no excitement at the EU headquarters in Brussels, nor in Washington or the settlements of Ariel and Itamar. In both capitals they were considered background noise. Currently, the main event is the accelerated Iran negotiations, which are supposed to end on June 30. No one in Jerusalem is hopeful that Russia, China, France or Britain will stand in President Barack Obama’s way to sign the nuclear agreement. But the agreement, which Netanyahu's associates have obliquely compared to the 1938 Munich one, will renew Germany’s historical debt to Israel. The first payment on that account is due in September, when France submits its proposal to the UN Security Council to recognize Palestine.