Meretz chair: Netanyahu’s settlement moratorium “too little and too late”

In a recent op-ed, Meretz party chair, MK Haim Oron, termed the Israeli government's 10-month freeze of new West Bank construction (excluding East Jerusalem and construction already underway) a "minor" development that was "too little and too late" and apparently born of Netanyahu's tactic of "playing for time".

Writing for the Israeli web portal, "Wallah", Oron welcomed even this limited step, based on the hope that it might be a, "down payment and promise of future payment in full".

But Oron noticed a pattern in which Israel's Prime Minister takes steps that seem much more courageous than they really are: "Like Netanyahu's declaration re two states," Oron noted, in which the Prime Minister inserted countless conditions that, "essentially emptied the declaration of any content - so, too, is the case with the temporary and partial freeze. Netanyahu is skipping over puddles, not crossing the Rubicon."

Oron expressed deep regret that the Israeli government seems to be motivated only by US pressures, not by the understanding that, "stopping the settlement enterprise is first and foremost a purely Israeli strategic interest".

Oron explained: "The [Greater] Land of Israel dream is the nightmare of the State of Israel," undermining its economy and threatening to tear apart its democracy, as a de facto "Settler State" increasingly rejects the authority of the government in Jerusalem.

Time is running out, Oron warned: "The bi-national state is beating at our gates, and we are sliding towards Apartheid."

Oron urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop acting like a small-time politician worried about his short-term political survival, and to start acting like a statesman with vision. Instead of being satisfied with fending off US pressures and creating a march-in-place peace process, Netanyahu needs to launch an honest-to-goodness process in order to, "save Israel as a Jewish and democratic state".

"He's capable of doing so," Oron concludes, "the question is whether he's willing".