Skip to footer

Netanyahu: Any deal with Palestinians will be put to voters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to lower expectations for talks, which will resume after a five-year hiatus. 

|
Uriel Sinai/AP
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, (c.), speaks during the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Sunday. Natanyahu said resuming peace talks with the Palestinians would be difficult, and that he would put any agreements to a national vote.
  • By Aron Heller Associated Press

| Jerusalem

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that planned peace talks with the Palestinians will be tough and any agreement reached would have to be ratified in a national referendum.

Netanyahu appeared to be lowering expectations for the talks in his first on-camera remarks since US Secretary of State John Kerry's weekend announcement that negotiations would soon resume after a five-year hiatus. Netanyahu pledged to insist on Israel's security needs above all – saying his main guiding principles will be to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel and avoid a future Palestinian state in the West Bank becoming an Iranian-backed "terror state."

"I am committed to two objectives that must guide the result – if there will be a result. And if there will be a result, it will be put to a national referendum," he said at the start of his weekly Cabinet meeting. "It won't be easy. But we are entering the talks with integrity, honesty, and hope that this process is handled responsibly, seriously and to the point."

Hardliners have floating referendum proposals before, usually as an attempt to add an additional obstacle to any efforts to cede war-won territories as part of a future peace agreement.

After a round of intense shuttle diplomacy, Kerry announced on Friday that Israel and the Palestinians had agreed on a basis for returning to the peace process, which broke down in 2008. The two sides are to meet – likely in the coming week – to work out final details before actually resuming formal negotiations on the toughest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A statement from Netanyahu's office on Saturday described the talks as being in Israel's strategic interests.

Final status negotiations aim to reach a deal on the core issues of the conflict, including borders, the fate of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, and security arrangements. While Netanyahu stressed Israel's security needs as a top priority, the Palestinians say they agreed to talks only after learning they would be based on Israel's pre-1967 borders.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had previously refused to negotiate with Israel so long as settlement construction continued in part of his hoped-for state. Israel has said it will release some Palestinian prisoners as a good will gesture, but there are few other official details to emerge about the framework of the talks.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Netanyahu: Any deal with Palestinians will be put to voters
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0721/Netanyahu-Any-deal-with-Palestinians-will-be-put-to-voters
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe