After former Labor head MK Shelly Yechimovich (Zionist Union) slammed her party’s head MK Yitzhak Herzog on Sunday, Herzog responded shortly afterwards on Facebook explaining why he doesn’t support the “two state solution” at the current juncture in time.
Yechimovich criticized Herzog for not coordinating his statements and position with members of his party, after he last Wednesday admitted to Army Radio that a “two-state solution” is not feasible at this time of Arab terror and high tensions. He voiced similar comments Friday, during a meeting with French President Francois Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
“I knew it,” wrote Herzog on Sunday after Yechimovich’s criticism. “I said it in advance: the moment I present a plan of separating from the Palestinians (by giving them a state in Israel’s heartland – ed.), they will jump on me from the left and the right, and attack me.”
“That’s exactly what happened. Shelly chose to attack me wildly.”
Addressing Yechimovich, his predecessor at the helm of the Labor party, he wrote, “dear Shelly, there are terror attacks every day. People are murdered. The blood is boiling. The incitement and the hatred have reached a peak. Two peoples, one among the other, one at the other’s throat.”
“What do you think, Shelly, that if you tell the Palestinians tomorrow: ‘hi, this is Shelly, let’s make peace,’ they’ll jump to shake your hand warmly and put down their knives?,” he mocked. “Even you don’t believe that. It’s all talk.”
According to Herzog the “two state solution,” according to which a Palestinian state would be established in Israel’s Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, is the only solution to preserve a Jewish majority in the state of Israel – but he admitted it is not practical, at least for now.
“We are not radical”
“We are the only party that consistently leads this solution against the Messianic vision of the radical right,” he wrote. “Bibi (Binyamin Netanyahu) is afraid and Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is afraid. The two of them are captive in the hands of their radicals and don’t dare to advance to a solution.”
“So in order to create a climate of negotiations, we first of all need separation – and calming. Us here and them there. We need to conduct a series of steps that will return the security. And we need to separate from Bibi. Only in this way can we separate from the Palestinians.”
Speaking about Labor, which in the last elections held a merger with Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua party to become Zionist Union, he wrote, “we are the party of David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin. The party that always, throughout all the years, was centrist. Not radical right and not radical left. I won’t let anyone, I repeat anyone, drag the party to one of these extremes. We are not radical right and we are not Meretz. We are Ben-Gurionists. We are Rabinists.”
Herzog, who way back in December 2013 said his plan is to divide Jerusalem and make massive land concessions, concluded by saying he would bring the issue of his policy up for decision by his party’s committee.
“I hear the vocal criticism in the media and the great quiet support among the people. I will bring it for a committee decision soon, and a committee decision will obligate all members,” he concluded.
The mention of peace plans comes after the last major agreement, the 1994 Oslo Accords, removed the terror status of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Fatah, established the Palestinian Authority (PA) and armed it, and largely ignited the 2000 Oslo War or Second Intifada in which well over 1,000 Israelis were murdered by Arab terrorists. A Fatah official later bragged that 70% of the attacks in the terror war were conducted by PA Security Forces created and armed in Oslo.
As for the “two state solution,” PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas last June gave credence to calls by Jewish nationalists arguing that a Palestinian state should be set up in Jordan, when he called Jordanian and Palestinian Arabs “one people living in two states.”
