One man, and the position he never changedNo Palestinian state, no withdrawal, nobody to negotiate with · 1984 to 1998
1984 to 1998
One man, and the position he never changed
A position often described now as a response to October 2023 was being printed in American newspapers in 1984, when Benjamin Netanyahu was a thirty-five-year-old ambassador giving a speech in a Baltimore hotel.
Nine clippings from ordinary American papers, 1984 to 1998, in which Netanyahu sets out the same position: no Palestinian state, no negotiable withdrawal, no legitimate Palestinian representative, annexation as the answer to a declaration. Every one of them was in print decades before October 2023.
He was out of office for much of this, and the archive holds Israeli governments of several kinds saying overlapping things. What these nine clippings establish is availability: no Palestinian state, no negotiable withdrawal, no legitimate Palestinian representative, annexation as the answer to a declaration — all of it in ordinary American papers, in his own quoted words, between 1984 and 1998. What they do not establish is that any of it caused a later policy. The chronology is the whole claim.
“The Arab decade is over… We smashed the PLO.”
Baltimore Sun, reporting a speech to a thousand people at the Hyatt Regency. One result, he says, is that “no longer is the PLO able to say it represents the Palestinian Arabs.” The argument that Palestinians have nobody entitled to speak for them is already finished and portable.
CP-1984-002“There is no reason to create a 22nd Arab state at the expense of the one Jewish state.”
Arizona Republic. Also: “Israel’s eastern front will remain in IDF hands. That is not negotiable,” and “the real challenge to peace is not our occupation, but would be our giving up the region.”
CP-1985-001A Security Council vote asking Israel not to deport Palestinians is “a day of hypocrisy” and a “rigged game.”
Birmingham News. The resolution had American support, and he says he is disappointed by the American vote.
CP-1988-007He resigns as U.N. envoy and begins campaigning “as a militant Likud-Herut hard-liner, only minutes after tendering his resignation.”
St. Louis Jewish Light, carrying the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. That description is the Jewish press writing in its own voice, in 1988.
CP-1988-012American talks with the PLO send “a very clear message, that terrorism pays.”
Palm Beach Post. Talking to Palestinians is itself the concession to be refused.
CP-1988-036Two weeks after Rabin is buried, the opposition goes back to attacking the peace process.
San Francisco Chronicle. The report recalls the rallies where he “was often the chief speaker,” and which “became the scene of some of the worst excesses of anti-Rabin incitement.” He says he did not see the placards, or the coffin.
CP-1995-002“Killings don’t deter Netanyahu.”
Delaware Gazette. Now prime minister, he calls the settlers “heroes” and promises to strengthen the settlements.
CP-1996-005Declare a state and Israel will retaliate. The likely step is annexation of West Bank land.
The Herald. Israel cannot accept “a new Iraq or Iran” next door, so the answer to a declaration of statehood is to take the territory.
CP-1998-002“Netanyahu: No Palestine.”
Atlanta Constitution, on his rebuff of Hillary Clinton’s call for a Palestinian state. The paper calls him “ever the courtly hard-liner.” A week later, in St. Cloud: Palestinians may have control over their “lives, but not the powers of statehood.”
CP-1998-006