Toby Greene: One of the challenges posed to Prime Minister Netanyahu is that there is a lack of clear strategy, in particular regarding the Palestinian issue. A concern expressed is that trying to preserve the status quo will lead to disaster, or even a third Intifada. Prime Minister Netanyahu himself has said he wants to avoid heading towards a bi-national state, but in the absence of peace talks it’s not clear how he plans to meet that concern. What do you think about that criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu?

Dore Gold: I think critics of Israel often have a short memory and they forget the actions the Israeli government has taken to try and make the peace process work, even when it has many faults. It was Prime Minister Netanyahu who moved his own position with respect to a number of key issues to try and reach out to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

It was Prime Minister Netanyahu who accepted the idea of a demilitarised Palestinian state in his famous Bar-Ilan speech a few years back. And when it was suggested to Prime Minister Netanyahu that in order to prepare the ground for a resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel should implement a settlement freeze for ten months (a policy that no previous Israeli government had undertaken) Prime Minister Netanyahu met the challenge and actually implemented a freeze.

Finally, when Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that in order to help Mahmoud Abbas come back to the negotiating table, yet again, it would be necessary for Israel to free a large number of Palestinian prisoners, three tranches of prisoner releases were implemented by the Netanyahu government. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it was President Mahmoud Abbas who balked at peace diplomacy with Israel.

There had been a very carefully negotiated framework agreement worked out between the United States, Israel and the Palestinians to set the stage for resuming negotiations. The framework agreement was very carefully drafted to allow each party to accept the framework with reservations. Under those terms, Israel accepted Secretary Kerry’s framework proposal. In March of 2014 when the same framework proposal was presented by President Obama in the Oval Office to Mahmoud Abbas the Palestinian answer was ‘I’ll get back to you’. In other words, Israel said ‘yes’ to peace and unfortunately the Palestinian leader said ‘no’.

We could analyse why Abbas gave a negative answer: he has competition from the Hamas movement which has gained strength; he has internal problems in the Fatah movement, with hardliners there and with Mohammed Dahlan, who seeks to oust Abbas, and is living in the United Arab Emirates at present. Regardless of the reasons why Abbas had to turn down the American peace proposal, the fact of the matter is that Israel has been on board in trying to make the peace process yield positive results. Unfortunately, we do not have cooperation from the Palestinian side.

Read the interview in full at Fathom Journal.