Benny Begin, one of the members of the cabinet Octet that is presumed to be behind any major Israeli security decisions, said in a speech yesterday that support for a Palestinian state is not a policy binding on the Netanyahu government but is something that is advocated solely for international audiences (Hebrew only). Begin added that the decision to support two states side by side has not been formally discussed within the government, and furthermore that someone like him could only serve in the government because such an understanding does not exist. He also expressed the opinion that a Palestinian state is not viable in the current environment because Israel’s security needs would require it to be completely demilitarized, and that is something that a sovereign Arab state will not be willing to accept.

This double talk, where a politician says one thing to international audiences and something very different to a domestic audience in his own language when he thinks nobody is paying attention, is something that Israelis and American Jews condemn all the time when it is done by Palestinians, and rightly so. In this case, it was said by a cabinet minister rather than the prime minister himself, and Begin’s strange aside about how he respects the prime minister as first among equals but that no formal decision on a Palestinian state was made by the government indicates that Begin’s position on this is at odds with Netanyahu’s. That at least provides some measure of solace. But just as we American Jews blast Palestinian politicians like Abbas Zaki for saying that the ultimate goal is to destroy Israel itself but that such things shouldn’t be announced to the world, we need to call out Begin for doing the exact same thing. Netanyahu says that he supports a Palestinian state and that he is ready to negotiate whenever the Palestinians are willing to come to the table. He therefore needs to denounce Begin as going against official Israeli policy, or Begin needs to explain why what the world believes is Israel’s official position is not in fact Israel’s official position. This kind of nonsense is incredibly damaging to Israel by destroying any international credibility that it has, and it is patently dishonest to make a huge stink over Mahmoud Abbas’s refusal to negotiate if in fact the Israeli government has tacitly decided that it is not prepared under any circumstances to accept a Palestinian state. So c’mon Bibi, do the right thing here and make it crystal clear that Begin is wrong and speaks for nobody but himself. If you don’t, then your silence will send a very different message.

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