As Israel's Knesset reconvened after a three-month break, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered this proposal to the Palestinians: Israel is ready to extend the moratorium on settlement expansion in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state".
The Palestinian response was clear: "the issue of the Jewishness of the state has nothing to do with the matter."
And the Americans? From thousands of miles away, they could only give a general, somewhat tangled response: "U.S. policy has been consistent. Both President Obama and Secretary Clinton are committed to Israel’s democracy as a Jewish state," a State Department official told Haaretz.
The "Jewish state" proposal rests upon long-standing concerns about Palestinians' "real interest" in "destroying Israel from within", Sylvain Cypel offered this observation in 2006 in Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse:
Once the Intifada had broken out (2000), the initial lie formed the basis of the underlying Israeli "conception". Konceptzia: this is the term used after 2000 by the military to characterize the view of a demonic Arafat who planned the Oslo trap so as to bring the refugees back and destroy Israel from within....
At the beginning of Operation Defensive Shield (March 28-April 17, 2002)....Oliver Rafowitz, the military spokesman in Jerusalem, had arranged for me to meet with General Kuperwasser, the second in command of military intelligence....Washington had asked Arafat to make an unambiguous public denunciation of suicidal terrorism, and to do so in Arabic and on Palestinian television. This was the very moment he was about to deliver his speech....
After the speech the general's automatic assessment was a prime example of the konceptzia. Yes, he admitted, Arafat had indeed demanded an immediate stop to suicidal terrorism. And yes, to refer to those who perpetrated it he had not used the usual word, shahid (martyr), but a clearly opprobrious term. And he had spoken of two states side by side, Israel and Palestine, in the future. But, Kuperwasser added, "he did not utter the words: "recognition of Israel as a Jewish state"....
And so to the politics of 2010. Prime Minister Netanyahu, less than 72 hours after his Cabinet mandated a loyalty oath for non-Jews who want to be Israeli citizens, both plays to his domestic gallery and puts the onus back on the Palestinian Authority. The prime issue is no longer Jewish settlements; instead, it is this challenge: you want limits on our expansion in the West Bank, then you must declare, "We Accept Israel as a Jewish State."