“We have to preserve [late Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon as we would an etrog. To keep him in a sealed box, padded with sponge, cotton wool and plastic wrap, at least until the end of the withdrawal. … He must be protected not only from the political banners, but also from the legal ones.” Veteran journalist Amnon Abramovich's iconic statement, made at a February 2005 seminar held at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, was a response to claims that the press was handling Sharon with kid gloves despite the mounting criminal investigation out of support for his controversial plans to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip. This attitude of whitewashing corruption in return for promoting peace has come to be known as “itrug,” and it was also relevant in 2008, when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was facing corruption allegations.

Unlike those two politictians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has burned every bridge on the road to peace. No one has invoked the term “itrug” in reference to the torrent of criminal suspicions raining down on him and his associates. Netanyahu set ablaze the one to the Palestinians, without which a solution based on the principle of two states for two people is not possible. During his many years in power, he missed no opportunity to miss an opportunity — an accusation generally leveled at the Palestinians — for dialogue with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Instead he took advantage of every chance to punish the Palestinians by expanding construction in Israeli settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes in the West Bank's Area C, designated as land for a future Palestinian state.

In a lengthy Aug. 6 article in The New Yorker, Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi wrote that the national Palestinian movement is nearing its demise. The two researchers, who were involved for three decades in efforts to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians, wrote that despite his limitations, Abbas could be the last Palestinian leader imbued with the moral authority and political legitimacy to achieve a negotiated peace agreement with Israel. Netanyahu preferred the preservation of his ultra-right coalition to the prospect of a peace agreement with member states of the Arab League, which would have provided a safety net for an arrangement with the Palestinians.

Even if Netanyahu wakes up tomorrow morning with a song of peace on his lips, he would likely be unable to uproot the Israeli hatred, fear and mistrust toward the Palestinians that he has nurtured for eight years. The Aug. 2 Peace Index, the periodic survey conducted by Tel Aviv University and the Israel Democracy Institute, provides cutting proof. It indicates that a sizable majority (77%) of Israeli Jews do not believe there is a connection between the current wave of terror attacks and Palestinian despair over the impasse in talks on a peace agreement. Under Netanyahu’s rule and with his encouragement, more than 70% of Israel’s Jews support Netanyahu’s proposal to execute the terrorist who stabbed to death three family members in the settlement of Halamish on July 21. About two-thirds of respondents support the death penalty for murderers of Israeli soldiers.