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Ask Israelis about peace prospects with neigh­bor­ing Pales­tini­ans and chances are most will share their dream of a day when both can live in har­mony. Yet we know peace has eluded every Israeli admin­is­tra­tion of late. But what about Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu? Does he have what it takes to bring peace to the region? Hmm. His sup­port­ers would argue that he has the right mix of inter­na­tional diplo­macy com­bined with exper­tise in for­eign affairs, eco­nomic lib­er­al­iza­tion, deficit reduc­tion, anti-terrorism poli­cies and enough chutz­pah to get the job done. His detrac­tors would argue that he has no real inter­est in a two state solu­tion and only buck­led last year under intense pres­sure from the West. But his Bar-Ilan Uni­ver­sity speech seemed to sug­gest oth­er­wise. Let’s gain an inside track from a polit­i­cal ana­lyst who has spent over half his life track­ing the PM’s moves, logged numer­ous hours on his cam­paign and today pub­lishes a blog and hosts a weekly radio pro­gram that pays trib­ute to “Bibi.”

Part Five: Jacob Korn­bluh, Bibi Report/ Bibi Report Live

Known inter­na­tion­ally by his first name, Jacob has his pulse on Netanyahu, Israeli pol­i­tics and the volatile cli­mate in the Mid­dle East. In fact, it’s fair to say that Jacob knows more about Netanyahu and Israel’s thorny pol­i­tics than most Amer­i­cans know about their pres­i­dent and cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion. Yet, bring­ing peace to Israel and its neigh­bors has never seemed as crit­i­cal as it does with a nuclear Iran on the hori­zon. But is it possible?

There is no doubt that Netanyahu extended an olive branch fur­ther than any pre­vi­ous Israeli prime min­is­ter has, yet Pales­tin­ian pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas and the Arab world replied with dis­dain. Detrac­tors called his pol­icy shift an about face and said it came too late. Right-wing sup­port­ers in his Likud party had mixed feel­ings – any­where from praise to com­par­ing his pol­icy shift to a u-turn but ulti­mately sup­ported it. Left-wing sup­port­ers in the Kadima Party said it was a step in the right direc­tion but some went as far as call­ing it a PR move.

Then there is the “O” fac­tor to con­sider. U.S. Pres­i­dent Obama out­lined a one-sided effort for regional peace in his Cairo speech a month ear­lier that called for a con­struc­tion freeze on all set­tle­ments. Netanyahu not only met this chal­lenge but also reit­er­ated his promise not to build new set­tle­ments or expro­pri­ate addi­tional land for exist­ing set­tle­ments while allow­ing set­tlers to main­tain nor­mal lives. End result? Netanyahu’s actions won praise for his abil­ity to change direc­tions while Obama’s pointed mea­sures drew crit­i­cism from Jews world­wide as the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion failed to sanc­tion those pur­port­ing anti-Israel hatred, vio­lence and ter­ror­ism like the Pales­tin­ian Author­ity and Iranian-backed Hamas.

Asleep at the wheel? No doubt. How could Obama over­look terrorist-run Gaza with its 59 Pales­tin­ian camps teach­ing hate via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)? Obama recently gifted this same agency with an ini­tial $40 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion just weeks ago. But guess what?  US cit­i­zens should be out­raged. Sup­port­ing refugees might sound noble but NOT when UNWRA employs Hamas ter­ror­ists whose sole goal is to teach hatred of Jews and anni­hi­la­tion of Israel. So sud­denly build­ing new homes for Israeli fam­i­lies seems irrel­e­vant when it comes to fund­ing terrorist-run Gaza with U.S. tax­payer dol­lars.

So in all this polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing, what do Israelis want? Jacob believes that the vast major­ity of Israelis sup­port a two state solu­tion but only under the con­di­tions Netanyahu set for­ward in his Bar-Ilan speech. Those include:

1. Recog­ni­tion: Pales­tini­ans must unequiv­o­cally rec­og­nize Israel as the state of the Jew­ish people.
2. Demil­i­ta­riza­tion: Ter­ri­tory under Pales­tin­ian con­trol must be devoid of an army, with­out con­trol of its air­space and with effec­tive secu­rity mea­sures to pre­vent weapons smug­gling into the ter­ri­tory. Real mon­i­tor­ing is imper­a­tive (not what occurs in Gaza today). And the Pales­tini­ans must not be able to forge any mil­i­tary pacts.

Jacob dri­ves home the notion that any­thing less puts Israel in dan­ger of fur­ther ter­ror­ism. He also empha­sizes other parts of Netanyahu’s speech that state there can be no peace if a Pales­tin­ian state makes pacts with Hezbol­lah to the north or Iran. Clearly, this couldn’t be truer. At the end of the day, Jacob is con­vinced Netanyahu means what he says. He is quick to reit­er­ate what many in the Obama admin­is­tra­tion have played down: the need for Pales­tin­ian con­ces­sions. Jacob states what the admin­is­tra­tion hasn’t, “The Pales­tini­ans have to stop ask­ing for every­thing in order to get what they say they want.”

We all want to believe the Pales­tini­ans lead­ers want state­hood but that’s hard to swal­low with the auto­matic refusal that comes from the lips of Abbas and other Arab lead­ers each time Netanyahu (or any pre­vi­ous Israeli PM) make ges­tures towards peace. So how many ges­tures has Netanyahu made? Try many. And how many ges­tures or con­ces­sions has the PA made? Try zilch. At some point, grand­stand­ing from the PA and other Arab lead­ers has to stop if they want to build pro­duc­tive lives for Pales­tini­ans. How else will they ever trade refugee camps and depen­dence for homes and inde­pen­dence? Jacob urges those that are unsure of the PM’s motives to lis­ten to his Bar Ilan Uni­ver­sity speech and note his vision:

“In my vision of peace, two peo­ples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect.  Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government.”

Israel is well aware it can’t afford to repeat the mis­take of the Gaza pull­out. If we rewind, we see Israel faced with world­wide pres­sure to pull its mil­i­tary forces out of Gaza only to receive a blan­ket of mis­siles tar­get­ing civil­ian homes and schools. Sur­prised? Hardly. This isn’t the first time Hamas or the Pales­tin­ian Author­ity invaded after Israel with­drew mil­i­tary forces from Gaza. Acts of good­will don’t deserve an onslaught of mis­siles. That is exactly the dan­ger Israel deals with at nearly every step.

But we know that demil­i­ta­riza­tion works as it has for Japan since post World War II. Besides renounc­ing war, Japan also main­tains a pol­icy against export­ing mil­i­tary hard­ware. Trad­ing war for pros­per­ity should be no prob­lem if the PA wants a state. In fact, if they are seri­ous about help­ing their peo­ple pros­per then sign­ing an agree­ment to demil­i­ta­rize and mak­ing a pol­icy against arms trans­porta­tion or forg­ing pacts with other forces or coun­tries shouldn’t be a deal breaker. His­tory shows this works.

Jacob points to the Haaretz poll pub­lished two weeks ago as fur­ther proof for the PM. The poll showed that 53% of Israelis said that fail­ing to cre­ate a Pales­tin­ian state would not make Israel a bi-national state.

So what can Netanyahu do to pro­mote peace? Jacob believes Netanyahu is the best advo­cate to bring a viable peace agree­ment that the major­ity of Israeli cit­i­zens will accept. Jacob cites the most recent exam­ple of freez­ing set­tle­ment con­struc­tion as an unprece­dented move and the best exam­ple at the PM’s will­ing­ness to make peace. Netanyahu froze set­tle­ment con­struc­tion in all set­tle­ments even in the largest set­tle­ment blocs that will undoubt­edly be part of Israel in any peace agree­ment. Pre­vi­ously, PM Sharon, U.S. Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and even PA pres­i­dent Abbas accepted peace in talks with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert. But while other lead­ers failed in cham­pi­oning peace despite their inten­sive talks with the PA, Netanyahu’s plan starts from the bot­tom up. Proof of his suc­cess? Try Netanyahu’s eco­nomic peace plan that is work­ing in the West Bank.

Pales­tini­ans must demand more from their lead­ers. If their lead­er­ship stalls, accepts inter­na­tional hand­outs over self-reliance and returns to ter­ror and intifada, then the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple con­tinue to lose. Jacob is con­vinced that Netanyahu is seri­ous as he recounts what Netanyahu recently said to Euro­pean ambas­sadors over lunch:

“Test me.”

Netanyahu is refer­ring to the fact that he will sur­prise the PA if they nego­ti­ate with him. He is will­ing to make con­ces­sions but they must too. Jacob reit­er­ates that the major­ity of Israel will accept an agree­ment that Netanyahu achieves between Israel and the PA just as the Israeli peo­ple have sup­ported the PM’s recent moves that received cab­i­net approval.

While Netanyahu has suc­ceeded in show­ing mea­sur­able com­pro­mise, Pales­tini­ans are empty-handed. Obama on the other hand is largely inef­fec­tive in the Mid­dle in that none of his efforts have per­suaded Iran or the PA to move for­ward with peace­ful ini­tia­tives. Obama’s sanc­tions on Iran were highly inef­fec­tive and his con­struc­tion freeze on set­tle­ments in Israel shows that he is unaware of the real dan­ger. Jacob refers to this as Obama’s naivety when deal­ing with the Mid­dle East.

Then there is spe­cial envoy George Mitchell to con­sider. While Mitchell made head­way resolv­ing the IRA incite­ment in North­ern Ire­land, the IRA’s motives are unlike those in Gaza. For instance, the IRA wanted North­ern Ire­land free of Eng­land unlike the Pales­tini­ans (or Iran) who vowed to blow Israel off the planet. The stakes Israel is deal­ing with are quite dif­fer­ent from North­ern Ire­land and putting a freeze on set­tle­ment con­struc­tion blames Israel. Open your eyes Obama. Why not sanc­tion groups that teach hatred to kids, import arms and recruit sui­cide bombers? Hmm. Penal­iz­ing Israel seems a tad un-American.

So how can we stop Hamas and the PA from teach­ing vio­lence and hatred in UN schools? Jacob ref­er­ences what Netanyahu told his cab­i­net a few weeks ago,

“It is not only mis­siles and rock­ets that endan­ger secu­rity and push peace fur­ther off. Words can also be dan­ger­ous…”

Until Obama is able to influ­ence the Arab world to stop teach­ing hatred, incit­ing vio­lence and cel­e­brat­ing ter­ror­ist deeds, peace will always take a back­seat to bloodshed.

This begs another loom­ing ques­tion: when will the Mid­dle East acknowl­edge Israel? Tough to say. Jacob refers to the say­ing, “Your enemy is my enemy.” As Israel receives threats from Pales­tini­ans, Syr­i­ans, Egyp­tians and Saudis, those same coun­tries are in jeop­ardy of los­ing con­trol to Islamic extrem­ists. Many Islamic mil­i­tant groups like Hamas, Hezbol­lah, Al Qaeda, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oth­ers are in cahoots with Iran. Sadly, no one wins.

The exis­ten­tial strug­gle between Hamas and Fatah, and between Israel and Iran, is even more pro­nounced between Iran and many of the Sunni states of the region. Iran is deter­mined to under­mine many of the under­stand­ings that coun­tries have reached with one another within the Arab world. With Ahmadine­jad at the helm, Iran poses a cred­i­ble threat to many of the regimes in the region. So far, Iran has not hid its abil­ity to incite unrest using var­i­ous prox­ies, and a nuclear Iran could ren­der that threat even more pal­pa­ble. Just today, the UN’s Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency con­firmed that Iran is work­ing on a nuclear war­head.

A regional nuclear arms race will likely ensue, bring­ing even more insta­bil­ity to an already volatile region. This is why it’s in the best inter­est of all par­ties in the region to encour­age peace between Israel and its neigh­bors. Luck­ily, a few promis­ing devel­op­ments are occur­ring.

So what can the PA do to secure peace for its peo­ple? Plenty. Let’s look at other suc­cess­ful exam­ples. Israel and Egypt signed a peace agree­ment 30 years ago thanks to the coura­geous lead­er­ship of Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Men­achem Begin. Just 15 years ago, Israel and Jor­dan signed a peace agree­ment cour­tesy of the brave lead­er­ship of Jor­dan­ian King Hus­sein and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Yitzhak Rabin. Just think. Fol­low­ing in these lead­ers foot­steps could help Abbas make his­tory and do what for­mer Pales­tin­ian Pres­i­dent Yasser Arafat couldn’t: put his peo­ple on the path to peace and prosperity.

Want to learn the lat­est on Israel and its neigh­bors? Inter­ested in hear­ing about Mid­dle East peace prospects and the myr­iad obsta­cles Israel faces? Then fol­low the Bibi Report blog daily and tune into the Bibi Report Live Mon­day at 8:00 p.m. CST for news on Israel, its neigh­bors and in-depth cov­er­age on PM Netanyahu. Let the Bibi Report hear from you on Twit­ter and Face­book.

Photo credits: Netanyahu at Begin-Sadat Center: Independent (UK)

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