Days before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to meet with President Obama, he laid out his principles Monday for accepting a Palestinian state, showing greater flexibility on territory but still pursuing a far more hawkish approach than any Palestinian leader is likely to accept.
He also made clear that if the recent reconciliation accord between Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian parties, led to Hamas becoming part of a Palestinian government, no peace would be negotiated.
“A government, half of whose members declare daily their intention to destroy the State of Israel, is not a partner for peace,” he said, speaking at the opening session of Parliament.
Mr. Netanyahu spoke a day after an unprecedented wave of Palestinian protesters marched toward Israel’s borders from four directions and Israeli troops responded with gunfire, killing more than a dozen people. The occasion was Nakba Day, when Palestinians mark Israel’s creation and mourn the expulsion and flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948.
Commentary in newspapers and on airwaves in both Israel and the Palestinian areas suggested that what took place Sunday might serve as a dress rehearsal for the coming year, posing a serious challenge to Israel. While Palestinians and critics abroad questioned the killing of protesters, many Israelis focused on why the military was not prepared for the breaching of the border fence in the Golan Heights.
Mr. Netanyahu said in Parliament that those who sought to enter Israel on Sunday were not clamoring for a Palestinian state but for Israel’s destruction.
“We must stop beating ourselves up and blaming ourselves,” he said. “The reason there is no peace is that the Palestinians refuse to recognize the State of Israel as the Jewish people’s nation-state.”
He added: “As for those who orchestrated these riots, 63 years of our independence has not changed a thing. They yelled that they want to return to Jaffa, to the Galilee. And the head of Hamas in Gaza yelled that they want to see the end of the Zionist enterprise, repeating the words voiced by his Iranian patron.”
At the same time, Mr. Netanyahu showed more willingness to yield territory than he had before, strongly implying that he would give up the vast majority of the West Bank for a demilitarized Palestinian state. He said Israel needed to hold onto all of Jerusalem and the large settlement blocs in the West Bank, thereby suggesting that he would yield the rest.
The other principles he enumerated included Palestinian recognition of Israel as the home of the Jewish people, an agreement to end the conflict, resolving the refugee problem only within the new state of Palestine and an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley.
Palestinian leaders have repeatedly rejected every one of those. As a result of the impasse, they have been pursuing other approaches to statehood, including political unity with Hamas and a plan to ask the United Nations in September to recognize a state of Palestine within the 1967 boundaries. That would include East Jerusalem and all of the West Bank and Gaza.
After the unity deal between Fatah and Hamas was announced, Israel said it was suspending its monthly transfer of nearly $100 million in Palestinian tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority. But on Monday it announced that it would most likely hand the money over, after assurances that it would not fall into Hamas hands.
Sunday’s protests, involving thousands of Palestinians who live in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, showed how the populist spirit spreading across North Africa and the Middle East has reached the Palestinians and the edges of Israel.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the country was facing a whole new approach to anti-Israel activism.
“We are just at the start of this matter, and it could be that we’ll face far more complex challenges,” he said on television.
Some Palestinian analysts also suggested that Sunday’s events marked a new phase of their struggle.
“This is a new era for the Palestinian people and the Arab nations,” wrote Talal Okal, a commentator in Al Ayyam, a Palestinian newspaper. “This new Arab age shows how to conduct the struggle in a totally different way.”
Mr. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Mr. Obama at the White House on Friday, address a large gathering of American supporters on Monday and then a joint meeting of Congress next Tuesday. His aides have indicated that since the Hamas-Fatah accord, he believes the likelihood of negotiated peace has declined and he is less obliged to make a strong offer to the Palestinians.
After he spoke in Parliament, the head of the opposition, Tzipi Livni of the center-left Kadima party, accused Mr. Netanyahu of having failed.
“If you do not initiate, decisions will be made for Israel,” Ms. Livni said. “You have missed your opportunity to provide Israel with a vision. You are going to the United States without initiatives for peace.”
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