To repeat: “Israel remains committed to pursuing comprehensive peace with all our neighbors, including the Palestinians.” There is a world of history in this sentence, starting with the word “comprehensive.” My book in progress will pinpoint the day that word entered the lexicon used to talk of Israel and our fight for survival. It first appeared in a UN Security Council resolution in 1975, the same one (I think) which awarded the PLO observer status at the Council, i.e. the right to be present but have no vote. It was in the same year as the “Zionism is racism” vote in the General Assembly.

“Comprehensive” was a new word and it signified that for the desired peace referred to in Res. 242 of 8 years earlier after the Six-Day War to be realized, all parties to the conflict had to be satisfied. In 242, the parties concerned were Israel and the contiguous Arab states that went to war to destroy Israel. But starting in 1975, there was a new party to the conflict which also had to be satisfied: the Ancient Palestinians. And they were inserted – they were invented – to shield the Arab states so that they would not have to recognize Israel and make peace. So long as the Ancient Ones were dissatisfied, there would be no peace. And in 1975 the PLO was clear that satisfaction meant the destruction of Israel.

So here is Bibi in a way applying a little verbal jujitsu. Notice how he commits Israel to a “comprehensive peace, including the Palestinians,” which indicates satisfying all the Arab states, and only then the Palestinians. It is a way of saying that for Israel, this remains the Arab-Israeli conflict and not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Notice too how he uses the word “legitimate,” when Hillary and Rice and Imam Barack Hussein used on Friday “illegitimate,” which here suggests that while the Ancient Ones have “legitimate aspirations” – and of course all aspirations are legitimate, which is not the same thing as all wishes are legal – they must conform to Israel’s need for security and recognition. This is like wanting to square the circle, for the only way to satisfy them is by crippling Israel’s security.

And as for Israel’s need for recognition: this is a lovely, low key reference to Islam undergoing a spiritual earthquake on a par with the Protestant Reformation or Vatican II’s cleansing of living Jews and future Jews of the guilt of killing the man from Nazareth.

Bibi surely knows that the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is, at least for now and the foreseeable future, a messianic fantasy…