The "concessions document" that Yedioth Ahronoth reporter Nahum Barnea attributed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not an expression of Netanyahu's beliefs, but it was an interesting development that presented two views: Either Netanyahu was prepared to be very flexible on the establishment of a Palestinian state, or he was engaged in an elaborate diplomatic maneuver to expose Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' peace rejectionism. The Palestinian leader tries to come off as a man of peace, while not negotiating with Israel and constantly maintaining tension with it and assaulting it at the U.N. and the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Netanyahu is also suspected of such insincerity, and to the world it appears the equation is balanced. The document was prepared by three officials close to the Israeli, Palestinian and American governments but not directly representing them: Abbas' close associate Hussein Agha from London, who represented him in 1995 in negotiations with then-Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin; Netanyahu's representative Isaac Molho, who was entrusted to handle the prime minister's diplomatic affairs; and Dennis Ross, the American official most involved in the peace talks. They banded together to produce a document with an American position in hopes of kick-starting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but this did not bear fruit. The little that can be surmised is that Netanyahu agreed to negotiate based on the assumption that the U.S. supports a position rooted in creating a Palestinian state and mutually agreed upon land swaps, giving Abbas some sort of position in Jerusalem and leaving Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria under his control. Instead of disagreeing with it, it would have been better to approve the document as a basis for negotiations, even if it was not 100 percent in line with Netanyahu's stance. A move like that would have lessened the extent of Israel's ostracism in the world. Benny Begin gave Netanyahu some rope when he did not prevent the Bar-Ilan speech in 2009, in which Netanyahu spoke of two states for two peoples, thus putting Abbas on the spot, even though many world leaders did not necessarily believe the prime minister was serious. But Naftali Bennett and Uri Ariel of Habayit Hayehudi, as well as the rightist flank of Likud, have not adopted the Bar-Ilan approach, leading to a net diplomatic loss for Israel. Netanyahu's response to the Yedioth report indicates the direction this election is headed. Had he said the document attributed to him was correct on some basic level, as he did in the Bar-Ilan speech, he would have been able to deal a blow to the Zionist Union and Meretz and contradict their claims that he is intransigent on the peace process. But because he denied it, he signaled that he is in fact running against the parties on the right, Habayit Hayehudi and Yisrael Beytenu, and therefore must distance himself from any concessions. In any case, the decision is his -- whether it works is up to the voters.
