Arabs denounce Netanyahu's speech

The Arab neighbours of Israel, like the Palestinians, denounced Monday the content of the speech given the day before by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Egyptian president felt that the point on the Jewish character of Israel ...ruin the peace possibilities....

•     Palestinians and three neighbours of the State of Israel (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan), Amman had not shown its disapproval at midday.
  
      “The call to recognize Israel as a Jewish state complicates matters further and ruins the prospects for peace,” said during a military ceremony, Hosni Mubarak, quoted by the official Mena.
  
      “Nobody will support this appeal, neither in Egypt nor elsewhere,” he added.
  
      Egypt is the only Arab country in the region, with Jordan, who has signed a peace treaty with Israel.
  
      According to Mena, the Egyptian president said he had the opportunity to tell the U.S. president Barack Obama that “the solution to all crises in the Arab world passes through El Qods (Jerusalem).”
  
      "I said to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the negotiations on the final status of Palestinian territories should resume where they were left immediately,” he continued.
  
      Under strong international pressure, particularly from Washington, Mr. Netanyahu has agreed in his speech Sunday on the principle of a Palestinian state, while posing a series of stringent conditions.
  
      He demanded the demilitarization of the State and the recognition by the Palestinian leadership of Israel as the Jewish State.
  
      He also ruled out a freeze on Jewish settlements, return of Palestinian refugees forced to flee during the creation of Israel in 1948, or a withdrawal from the occupied Arab Jerusalem.
  
      The Palestinians and the Syrian press have also condemned the speech.
  
      “It is becoming clear that we have an Israel government that denies actually a two-state solution, the cessation of settlement and the resumption of negotiations from where they stopped” in late 2008, said the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat.
  
      According to him, the Palestinian leadership has come into contact “on Sunday evening with the U.S. administration and European and Arab countries” to explain that Benjamin Netanyahu did express five – no-.”
   
      "He said –no- to a solution of two states, - no - to the freeze on settlements, - no - to the vision of President Barack Obama for a new Middle East, - no - to the resumption of negotiations at the point where they stopped and - no - to the Arab peace initiative” offering a normalization with Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from the occupied territories, he said.
  
      Sunday evening, the Islamist Hamas, in power in Ghaza, had denounced a “racist and extremist ideology.”
  
      In Damascus, the mass circulation daily Al-Watan ruled Monday that Mr. Netanyahu had “torpedoed all peace efforts.”
  
      The Prime Minister has confirmed that he rejected the Arab initiative for peace as well as all the initiatives and resolutions of the Security Council on “regional” Peace, wrote the newspaper of the ruling party Al-Baath.
  
      In a statement, the Lebanese President Michel Sleiman has called on the international community to "exert pressure" on Israel to accept previous peace initiatives.
  
      Within the international community, the U.S. president praised the speech of Mr. Netanyahu as an "important step forward", while the Europeans have mentioned a "small step", which should appeal to others.
  
      
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.