JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he is willing to support the creation of a Palestinian state, for the first time making a commitment that the United States, Europe and the Arab nations have pushed for since he took office.
But in an address delivered near Tel Aviv, he attached a weighty list of conditions dictated by his personal beliefs and by the need to satisfy his right-leaning coalition in the Israeli parliament:
It would have to cede control of its airspace to Israel.
It could be created only if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland.
President Barack Obama welcomed Netanyahu’s speech as an “important step forward” and in a statement endorsed both key Israeli and Palestinian concerns.
But the prime minister’s speech left major points of contention unresolved, including Obama’s call in a speech in Cairo this month for a freeze on Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
In his remarks, Netanyahu did not commit to a freeze and instead shifted the discussion to what he views as the core issue — long-standing Arab rejection of the idea of a Jewish national home in “the land of our forefathers.”
“The root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own,” he said.
Netanyahu’s remarks were sharply condemned by Palestinian officials, who said the prime minister had undermined the peace process by attaching so many conditions to Palestinian statehood and drawing a hard line on other issues.
Netanyahu rejected the idea of resettling any Palestinian refugees inside Israel and insisted that Jerusalem would remain under the full control of Israel instead of becoming a joint capital — both issues that the Palestinians say should be negotiated.
The Palestinians — and the Arab states broadly — were also hoping that he would announce a freeze on settlements, something that past Israeli governments have promised. The West Bank, occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, is home to nearly 300,000 Jewish settlers.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Netanyahu “wants people to believe he said Palestinian state. What he said was that Palestinians left in cantons (states) on the West Bank can have a flag and a song.”
Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, he added, would slight the Muslim, Christian and other Arabs who make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population and would prejudge resolution of the refugee issue.
Officials from the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, said the speech showed that Palestinians will not win concessions from Israel through negotiations.
The group maintains an armed wing that fires rockets into Israeli territory and attacks Israeli military patrols along the Gaza-Israel border.
In his speech, Netanyahu said the prospect of Hamas taking over the West Bank was one reason Israel must attach security conditions to the creation of a Palestinian state. He also said that, ultimately, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s government would have to extend its control to Gaza and “defeat” Hamas.
But Netanyahu’s advisers and party supporters said he had shown willingness to deliver a “secure peace” that allows Palestinians full self-governance — and has put the onus on the Palestinians to prove they are serious.
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