Brilliant Bibi

I personally thought PM Netanyahu's speech bordered on brilliance.

Not that what he said was so unexpected or new. But the way he was able to maneuver within his problematic diplomatic situation and come up with a speech like he did was, in my mind, brilliant.

To start off, and this is not even the most important point to me, he gave up very little. He talked and talked and only mentioned once the possibility of a PA state at the end of the process. until that mention it was neighboring territories and living side by side and variations of that. And when he did finally mention it, he had already by then set so many preconditions that the Palestinians would have to fulfill, by their own agreement in previous negotiations and agreements, that the issue of a Palestinian State is at best moot, most likely irrelevant, and even if it should come to be it would by definition be not a problem, as they would be peaceful (assuming Israel stays tough on these conditions).

The more important part of the speech was the history lesson by Professor Bibi. Every time Bibi Netanyahu gets up to speak, you can expect some sort of history lesson somewhere in the speech. Too bad history is boring, so most people ignore those parts of the speech. For example, on the Israeli website I was watching the speech on, they had a plug-in to see peoples comments on the speech from Facebook. As soon as Bibi started talking history, you could see form the style of the comments that most people tuned out and only tuned back in when he started talking current reality again.

So Bibi gave a history lesson in two parts:

1. He discussed the history of Palestinian terror showing two things - 1) Palestinian terror started well before the State or any semblance of occupation existed. So anybody who claims the Pali terror is a result of the occupation is a liar. 2) He showed how every time Israel gave concessions, in land, to the Palestinians terror from their side increased.
2. He refuted the suggestion by Obama, and others, that the State of Israel is a result of the Holocaust. He went through a Jewish history lesson detailing how the Land of Israel has been ours for three thousand + years, and he described our history in, and connection to, the land. He said the Holocaust may have sped up the process of our returning to the land, but it is not the cause of our returning to the land. He even said that had we already had the state before the holocaust, it would have prevented the holocaust. That point would be debatable, but the point was made.

So all in all, I was very impressed with Bibi's speech yesterday, and with his ability to throw the ball back in the court of the Palestinians.

Based on the reactions from the PA, it seems they have shown again how little they are actually interested in peace and will not honor past agreements. They expect Netanyahu to hand them everything on a silver platter and not obligate them to keep their side of the deals...