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JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected demands for Israeli recognition of a Palestinian “right to return” to any part of the sovereign state of Israel, saying the “Palestinian refugee” problem must be solved in the Arab countries where most refugees have lived for several generations.

Netanyahu gave an impassioned 30-minute policy speech to the Begin Sadat Center at Bar Ilan University. The speech was not only a statement of political purpose, but also a reply to comments made by U.S. President Barack Obama last week in Cairo urging Israel to help create a Palestinian state.

In a strong and resolute tone, Netanyahu described the dilemma that Israel faces with its Palestinian population, “which Israel does not want to rule” and repeated the promise of previous prime ministers to recognize the right of Palestinian Arabs to self-rule.

Netanyahu also said that he would insist on Palestinians keeping the accord that Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas signed, but which the PLO would not ratify: to recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East.

Netanyahu stressed that Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust, but because it is “our homeland,” adding that if Israel had been created only a few years earlier, there would have been no Holocaust.

Netanyahu added another condition – that the Palestinian entity be disarmed and that they not be allowed to forge military accords with other nations, or with the Hamas and Hezbollah terror groups, and that they not pose an aerial threat to Israel.

The Israeli Prime Minister then used the podium to remind the world that Israel’s 2005 pullout from Gaza had allowed Gaza Palestinians to take up positions to fire mortars and missiles into Sderot, Beershava, Ashkelon and Ashdod, placing more than one million Israelis under siege.

Palestinian Authority spokespeople rejected Netanyahu’s conditions out of hand.

And Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinian State be demilitarized clashes with President Obama’s current allocation of funds and American military personnel to train the new Palestinian army. The American justification is that the Palestinian soldiers are being trained to fight Hamas, but the Palestinian army is now in negotiation with Hamas with the goal of forming a joint command.

It remains unclear whether the Israeli prime minister will go so far as to disarm Palestinians now being trained by the American armed forces.

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1 COMMENT

  1. David – well done. I believe the key to the entire problem is what is written in your final sentence/paragraph – American support for the pal. terrorists.

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David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

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