Bibi’s iron wall

  The dream of Eretz Yisrael (Greater Israel) is as alive as ever in the Jewish state. And to make that dream a reality, Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has been using a time-honored Israeli negotiating strategy: appear reasonable, while making impossible demands to gain time in which to change facts on the ground. Bibi’s latest demand — that the Palestinian Authority (PA) must recognize Israel as a Jewish homeland in exchange for reinstating a temporary freeze on Israeli settlement construction on land that is supposed to form the future Palestinian state — should be seen in that light. The PA recognized Israel as a sovereign state as long ago as the 1993 Oslo Accords. To further define it now as a “Jewish state” would have compromised the status of the nearly two million Israeli Arabs, as well as the millions of Palestinian refugees around the region who demand their