Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu To Europe: Stop Treating Palestinians "Like Spoiled Child"

The Jerusalem Post:

Some leaders in Europe treat the Palestinians “like a spoiled child” and instead need to “tell the Palestinians the truth,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday during a meeting with visiting Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov.

According to government sources, Netanyahu told Mladenov, considered one of the friendliest foreign ministers toward Israel in the EU, that there were individuals in the EU who never hesitated in telling Israel what they expected it to do, but were very reticent to take the same liberties with the Palestinians.

He was specifically talking about a reluctance by some in the EU to call explicitly for the Palestinians to give up on a “right of refugee return” and to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, even though these Europeans had no qualms about calling clearly for Israel to agree to a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines and to redivide Jerusalem.

By not speaking with the same determination or frankness with the Palestinians, Netanyahu said, these leaders were “doing a disservice to those individual Palestinian leaders who are ready for compromise and deserve their support.”

The government sources named neither the Europeans nor the Palestinian leaders to whom Netanyahu was referring.

Israeli officials have long complained that while the Europeans are very specific when it comes to the solutions they envision regarding future borders or Jerusalem, when it came to an issue like refugees they often suffice with saying that a “just solution must be found.”

Why, one official asked, do they not use that same formula when addressing all issues, saying that a “just solution” needs to be found to the border question, rather than plainly referring to the 1967 lines as the resolution of that issue/ Netanyahu, who is scheduled to travel to Bulgaria and Romania in early July, reiterated Israel’s opposition to the Palestinians’ UN gambit, saying UN recognition would “put into UN cement” the maximalist Palestinian positions and prevent flexibility later.

To advance peace, Netanyahu said, it was necessary to oppose the PA’s move to the UN.

Bulgaria, along with countries like Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic, are considered among Israel’s closest supporters in the EU. When they were part of the Warsaw Pact, however, they were among the nearly 100 countries that recognized a Palestinian state in the late 1980s.

Regardless, Israel is lobbying these countries to vote against recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN in September, and – according to one government official – Mladenov gave the impression during his meetings in Jerusalem that Bulgaria would not support the Palestinian move.

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