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Netanyahu: I deceived US to destroy Oslo accords > Palestine > Redress Information & Analysis
There is one video Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, must be praying never gets posted on YouTube with English subtitles. To date, the 10-minute segment has been broadcast only in Hebrew on Israels Channel 10. [Editors note: A version of the Natanyahu video with English subtitles is now available and can be viewed, together with the translated English transcripy, here.]
Its contents, however, threaten to gravely embarrass not only Mr Netanyahu but also the US administration of Barack Obama.
The film was shot, apparently without Mr Netanyahus knowledge, nine years ago, when the government of Ariel Sharon had started reinvading the main cities of the West Bank to crush Palestinian resistance in the early stages of the second intifada.
he makes a series of unguarded admissions about his first period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999
Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the family that he deceived the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was helping implement the Oslo accords, the US-sponsored peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.
Writing in the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the columnist Gideon Levy called the video outrageous. He said it proved that Mr Netanyahu was a con artist who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes. He added that the prime minister had not reformed in the intervening period: Such a crooked way of thinking does not change over the years.
In the film, Mr Netanyahu says Israel must inflict blows [on the Palestinians] that are so painful the price will be too heavy to be borne A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority, to bring them to the point of being afraid that everything is collapsing.
When asked if the US will object, he responds: America is something that can be easily moved. Moved to the right direction They wont get in our way Eighty per cent of the Americans support us. Its absurd.
He then recounts how he dealt with President Clinton, whom he refers to as extremely pro-Palestinian. I wasnt afraid to manoeuvre there. I was not afraid to clash with Clinton.
His approach to White House demands to withdraw from Palestinian territory under the Oslo accords, he says, drew on his grandfathers philosophy: It would be better to give two per cent than to give 100 per cent.
The trick, he says, is not to be there [in the occupied territories] and be broken; the trick is to be there and pay a minimal price.
The trick that stopped further withdrawals, Mr Netanyahu adds, was to redefine what parts of the occupied territories counted as a specified military site under the Oslo accords. He wanted the White House to approve in writing the classification of the Jordan Valley, a large area of the West Bank, as such a military site.