the style of American policy towards the Muslim world. Some months later, a new Israeli government was elected. It was headed by Binyamin Netanyahu and included extreme-right and even fascist elements. It seemed that Washington was headed towards a clash with Jerusalem, but Obama avoided a confrontation and contented himself with a half-hearted recognition by Netanyahu of the "Two States for Two Peopies" solution. Netanyahu made this conditional upon Palestinian acceptance of Israel as "the state of the Jewish people", which means the acceptance of the Zionist narrative, giving up in advance the rights of the Palestinian refugees and the negation of equality for the Arab citizens of Israel. Netanyahu hoped that no Palestinian leader could accept that.
102 The perceived Iranian effort to acquire nuclear arms was defined in Israel as an "existential danger". It threatened to create a "balance of terror", such as had existed in the past between the United States and the Soviet Union.The only practical way to avoid this danger is to turn the region into a zone free of means of mass destruction, in the framework of a regional peace treaty, after the signing of an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty.
demonstration in Tel-Aviv: against the 2nd Lebanon war
Photo: Rachel Avnery
103 The postulated danger of an Iranian nuclear bomb served the Netanyahu government also as a means to divert attention from the necessity of conducting practical peace negotiations with the Palestinian people. Like all Israeli governments in the past, it acted to prevent the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, the opposition to which is imbedded deeply in