Benjamin Netanyahu vows to hold referendum on peace deal
Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to stage the first referendum in Israel's 65-year history to give voters the final say on any peace agreement reached with the Palestinians.
1:10PM BST 21 Jul 2013
The pledge came as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators prepare to hold their first direct talks in three years at a meeting in Washington in the coming week.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, announced last Friday that he had secured a tentative agreement to renew negotiations - prompting a chorus of criticism from Right-wingers in Mr Netanyahu's coalition who are implacably opposed to a Palestinian state.
Mr Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister told a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that a decision on ending the historic conflict with the Palestinians was too important to be decided by the government alone.
"It will be put to a referendum," he said "I believe that this is necessary. I do not think that such decisions can be made, if indeed an agreement is achieved, by this or that coalition process; it must be put to the people for a decision."
A referendum would require new legislation in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, since Israel has no legal provision for popular votes on one-off issues. Those entitled to vote would include Israel's Arab population, which makes around 20 per cent of the national total.
Mr Netanyau believes ratification in a national plebiscite could enable him to overcome Right-wing resistance by endowing a peace accord with popular legitimacy.
"The idea is that there will be no question about the legitimacy or lack of legitimacy [of any agreement] because people's voices will have been heard," said an Israeli official close to the prime minister. "Given the assumption that any agreement will contain difficult choices and compromises for Israel, you need that kind of legitimacy so that it can be implemented.
"The prime minister also believes that because he is from the Centre-Right and is seen as Mr Security, he has the ability to take the public along with him if he does reach an agreement he can support."
The prospect of an electoral veto could also help Mr Netanyahu keep his coalition intact after several members threatened to resign if peace talks were held under certain conditions that the Palestinians have demanded, such as a settlement freeze or on the basis of pre-1967 borders.
Yisrael Katz, the transport minister and a Right-wing member of Mr Netayahu's Likud party, told Israel Radio that a referendum would allow politicians opposed to the peace process to remain in the government.
"I am confident that Netanyahu will keep his word - if the process indeed leads to anything substantial, which I doubt it will," he said.
Mr Netanyahu told his cabinet that resumed negotiations were in Israel's strategic interests. The goals for Israel, he said, were to prevent the creation of a bi-national state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea - effectively ensuring that Israel can continue as a majority Jewish state - and stopping the establishment of an "Iranian-sponsored terrorist state" on the West Bank.
He added: "We will need to find a balance between these two things, and our negotiating partners will also need to make concessions that will allow us to maintain our security and uphold our vital national interests."
The initial talks fall short of face-to-face meetings between Mr Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, who have not met since 2010. Instead, the two sides will be represented by Tzipi Livni, Israel's chief negotiator and justice minister, and her Palestinian counterpart, Saeb Erekat.
The terms on which the two sides have agreed to meet have kept private, although Yuval Steinitz, Israelﾒs intelligence and strategic affairs minister, appeared to concede one Palestinian demand at the weekend by saying an unspecified number of "heavyweight" Palestinians prisoners would be freed - possibly to coincide with the end of Ramadan early next month.
Mr Abbas has demanded a complete freeze in Israeli settlement building in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, the issue that prompted him to break off talks in 2010. Right-wing ministers were adamant on Sunday that no such concession had been granted, despite media speculation that Mr Netanyahu had ordered an unofficial building halt.
"The official policy is what counts," Mr Katz said. "I am against a freeze and I don't believe that such a thing will happen. It would be immoral, un-Jewish and inhuman to freeze the lives of people and their children."
Shalom Yerushalmi, a commentator in Ma'ariv newspaper, wrote that the issue could eventually torpedo Mr Netanyahuﾒs coalition.
"When will the real crises start?" he asked. "When they start to talk about practical steps on the ground, like a settlement freeze. That will be the first hurdle that Netanyahu will have to cross in his coalition. He will wage tough battles in the Likud, and it is not clear that he will emerge unscathed. It could be that the entire coalition business will then start to unravel."
Avigdor Lieberman, the former foreign minister and Mr Netanyahu's partner in the Likud-led coalition, predicted that the latest negotiations were doomed. "It's important to negotiate, and even more important for negotiations to be predicated on realism and not illusions," he wrote on Facebook. "There is no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least not in the coming years, and what's possible and important to do is conflict-management."
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