Raymond Deane

Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech was quite clearly designed to be rejected by all who care about Palestinian rights, and accepted by all who seek an excuse to pretend that Israel is serious about peace. The latter clearly include mainstream media outlets such as the Irish Times, which headlined "Policy shift as Netanyahu backs two-state solution", and will in all probability also include mainstream US and EU politicians, always eager to embrace the Zionist state. It's quite clear that there is no policy shift involved, and that Netanyahu doesn't back a two-state solution. What he backs, as always, is the perpetual subjugation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and the demotion of Israeli Palestinians to the status of second-class citizens of an Apartheid state.

Norman Finkelstein

The final status issues consist of borders, East Jerusalem, settlements and refugees.  Here's what international law and international public opinion have to say and here's what Netanyahu has to say:
 
Borders.The International Court of Justice ruled that the whole of the West Bank and Gaza are Occupied Palestinian Territory.  Netanyahu declared that Israel needed "defensible" borders which means that Israel will not return to the June 1967 borders. 
East Jerusalem. The International Court of Justice ruled that East Jerusalem is Occupied Palestinian Territory.  Netanyahu declared that the whole of East Jerusalem belongs to Israel.  
Settlements. The International Court of Justice ruled that the settlements are illegal under international law.  Netanyahu declared that the settlers needed to live normal lives which means not only that the settlements in situ won't be dismantled but that there will be settlement expansion.
Refugees. The main human rights organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have stated that the Palestinian refugees have a right of return.  Netanyahu declared that Palestinians must relinquish their right of return.
 
On all the final status questions Netanyahu's speech repudiated international law.  Nonetheless Obama praised it as an important step.
 
God helps those who help themselves. We should stop looking to saviours and messiahs from on high and get on with the work of organizing public opinion which is amenable to a reasonable settlement.

Nur Masalha

Netanyahu’s Apartheid Speech

Describing the indigenous inhabitants of the land as a demographic problem would be considered racism in any normal democratic country. Clearly Benjamin Netanyahu thinks that the Palestinian citizens of Israel (not the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza) are the real demographic threat to the Zionist state. Speaking at the Hertzliya conference in December 2003, Netanyahu declared Israel had already ‘freed itself from control of almost all Palestinian Arabs’ in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would rule themselves and administer their own affairs, he said. ‘If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens’, he added. ‘If Israel's Arabs become well integrated and reach 35-40 percent of the population, there will no longer be a Jewish state but a bi-national one’, he went on. If Israeli-Palestinians remain at 20 percent but relations are tense and violent, this will also harm the Israeli state. Therefore a policy is needed to confront this ‘demographic threat’ inside Israel.

Netanyahu’s recent speech is fairly consistent with his racist speech of 2003. After more than 100 years of Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine he and other leaders of the Israeli state are offering the Palestinians more of the same. There is also nothing new in Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians first recognise Israel’s right to be a racist state. Netanyahu insists that 90 percent of historic Palestine be reserved exclusively for Jewish colonies at the expense of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, while two-thirds of the 10 million Palestinians remain refugees or internally displaced persons. He wants the remnants of the Palestinian people to be confined to ghettos and concentration camps in Gaza, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, al-Khalil (Hebron) and Jenin. Of course he (like Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres before him) does not want to rule over the Palestinians; he wants the land without the people; and he wants to keep Palestinian lands and water, control Palestinian airspace and environment, and continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from occupied Jerusalem.

Having ‘freed himself from control of almost all Palestinian Arabs,’ Netanyahu seeks to consolidate further Israeli apartheid, while his Foreign Minister (Avigdor Lieberman) continues to reside in an illegal colony in the West Bank and his cabinet toying with the idea of banning commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba. But in the words of former prime minister Ehud Olmert, Israel cannot survive long as an ‘apartheid state’. Israeli occupation-cum-apartheid is illegal, immoral and unsustainable. It is time therefore to galvanise international public opinion on the basis of the ending of Israeli military rule, the removal of Jewish-only racist settlements and fundamental demands for equality for all in Palestine-Israel.