Another reminder: Netanyahu, a strident opponent of the successful efforts by the Rabin-led government to reach a peace agreement with the PLO, culminating in the Oslo Process, played a major role in mobilizing Israeli opinion against the peace process. This included incitement against Rabin—who Likud propaganda likened to Hitler—which created the conditions for his assassination by an Israeli-Jewish terrorist and eventually for Netanyahu’s election as PM in 1995.

“On July 8, 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s newly elected prime minister and the leader of its right-wing Likud Party, paid a visit to the neoconservative luminary Richard Perle in Washington, D.C.,” journalist Craig Unger wrote in Vanity Fair in March 2007. “The subject of their meeting was a policy paper that Perle and other analysts had written for an Israeli-American think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic Political Studies. Titled ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,’ the paper contained the ‘kernel of a breathtakingly radical vision for a new Middle East.’”

By waging wars against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the paper proposed, Israel and the U.S. could stabilize the region. But President Bill Clinton didn’t sign on. Instead, he tried to slow down efforts by the Israeli prime minister to kill the peace process, which helped ignite Palestinian rage that led eventually to the second Intifadah. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, gave a green light to the Israelis to suppress the Intifadah and went to implement the strategy proposed in “A Clean Break.” No need to add a reminder about how that sad chapter ended.

Netanyahu ran this time on a platform of burying the corpse of the peace process and continuing construction of more Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Forget about negotiating a two-state solution with the Palestinians. Instead, he has been advancing a plan for an “economic peace” under which Israel, together with the Americans and the Europeans, would create an island of prosperity for the Palestinians, a Middle Eastern Hong Kong. In return, they would be persuaded to give up their aspirations for political freedom. Meanwhile, Netanyahu maintains his commitment to put an end to Iran’s nuclear military program, even if military power—preferably American military power—is required to achieve that “existential goal.” ...

JERUSALEM -- In a direct challenge to President Barack Obama's commitment to rejuvenate moribund Mideast peace talks, Israel on Thursday dismissed American-led efforts to establish a Palestinian state and laid out new conditions for renewed negotiations.

Leaders of Israel's hawkish new government told former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, the special U.S. envoy, that they aren't going to rush into peace talks with their Palestinian neighbors.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he would require Palestinians to accept Israel as a Jewish state in any future negotiations - a demand that Palestinians have up to now rejected, Israeli government officials said.

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Palestinian leaders have said they won't open peace talks with Netanyahu's government until it agrees in principle to the idea of a two-state solution and imposes a freeze on building Jewish housing in the West Bank.

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"U.S. policy favors - with the respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - a two-state solution, which would have a Palestinian state living in peace alongside the Jewish state of Israel," Mitchell said before meeting with Lieberman.

Netanyahu has refused to embrace that formula and has instead floated the idea of offering Palestinians limited rights that would fall short of independence. ....