Yair Netanyahu in Breitbart Op-ed: Land for peace doesn't work
Prime Minister's son declares, the “Land for Peace” formula leads in reality to “Land for War”.
By ALEX WINSTONYair Netanyahu(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Yair Netanyahu, the son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Monday published an opinion piece on the Breitbart news website explaining how despite giving up land for peace and other initiatives, Israel still finds itself in the firing line and cannot afford to give in to more demands.Land for Peace is an interpretation of a UN Security Council Resolution that determines Israel's forces should withdraw from all territories. Its success, however, is based upon a willingness of the Israel's enemies to recognize the State of Israel and pursue peace.After a weekend in which 700 rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip, resulting in the death of four Israeli citizens and dozens wounded, Israel is once again facing a balancing act between peace and war.The prime minister's son negated arguments of "the left in Israel, Europe and America," which, he wrote, sees the "root cause" of the terrorism in poverty and despair. Netanyahu believed that this reasoning is wrong, seeing that Palestinians received billions in aid "surpassing even the amount that Japan received to recover after World War II."The young Netanyahu firmly placed the blame in the hands of Hamas, who rule Gaza, saying "The reason the people of Gaza live in poverty is because their terrorist government utilizes the foreign aid that they receive to build their missile infrastructure and construct terror tunnels with the aim of waging war on the Jewish state."During the unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005, around 10,000 Jewish inhabitants were forced to leave their homes, a measure intended to prove Israel's commitment to the 'land for peace' initiative. Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007 and since then Israel has faced wave after wave of rocket bombardments and terror attacks. As Netanyahu wrote "The right in Israel warned that the evacuated Gaza Strip will become a launching pad for missiles into Israel and that Gaza will be taken over by Hamas. The left mocked this assumption and reassured the Israeli public that once Israel will be out of the Gaza Strip there will be peace".With more than half a million Jewish residents currently living in Judea and Samaria the concept of land for peace there is a lot more difficult to envisage, despite the insistence of the international community that any future peace deal must include Israel giving up its settlements in those areas.Netanyahu declared that "such a move will lead to the destruction of Israel. The 'Land for Peace' formula leads in reality to 'Land for War.'”
