Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Palestinians must "recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people" in order to achieve real peace.
In a speech at Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center on Sunday, he said: ‘’The Palestinians must abandon their refusal to recognise the right of the Jewish people to their national state.’’
Such recognition was "a condition for reaching an agreement at the end of negotiations, but not for launching them", he said.
"Are you finally ready to recognise the Jewish state, the national state of the Jewish people?" he asked, directly addressing Palestinian leaders, deploring that their response so far to that question has been "no".
"So long as the Palestinians do not recognise this right, there will be no true peace," he warned.
He also refuted that Israeli settleme,nts are the cause of the cponflict with the Palestinians.
"The root of the conflict is the Jewish state," Netanyahu said.
"The conflict, if I have to choose a date when it began in earnest, began in the year 1921, on the day Palestinian Arabs attacked the immigrants' house in Jaffa. This attack, of course, had nothing to do with the territories or settlements. It was against the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel.
"Then came the partition plan in 1947, with the suggestion of an Arab state alongside a Jewish state. The Jews agreed, the Arabs refused. Because the issue was not then the question of a Palestinian state – the issue was and remains the Jewish state. Then 19 years later came the stranglehold around us aimed at uprooting us. And why? After all, then there was no occupation,’’ Netanyahu said.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s speech was delivered at the same venue where Netanyahu first acknowledged the need for a two-state solution to the conflict in 2009.
Talks between Israel and the Palestinians resumed last week after a two-week break while the Israeli and Palestinian leaders were at the UN and the focus was on Iran’s nuclear program.
The direct talks, which are being held in Israel and the West Bank under a US-imposed media blackout, have been set to last nine months.
The talks are meant to reach a final-status peace deal that will solve all outstanding issues between the two sides. But there has recently been speculation in the Israeli press that Israel will offer some kind of interim agreement.
On Iran, Netanyahu rejected the notion that Tehran was merely seeking nuclear energy for peaceful means, saying that countries that want to harness nuclear energy for civilian needs do not insist on enriching uranium and building plutonium reactors, elements not needed for civilian nuclear purposes but only to build nuclear weapons.
“The international community’s position toward Iran needs to be: We are willing to come to a diplomatic solution – but only one that will dismantle from Iran its capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. That means no centrifuges for enriching uranium and no plutonium reactor,” he said.
"If they disarm, they will receive, if they do not disarm, they will not receive."
At his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu stressed he was not against diplomacy with Iran, but rather wanted to ensure that negotiations with Iran will lead it to a halt of uranium enrichment.