WikiLeaks: Bibi Supported Land Swap with Palestinians
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Obama administration just two weeks after elected to Knesset that he supported the idea of a land exchange and had no desire to govern Palestinian territories, according to a diplomatic cable released by the online whistleblower WikiLeaks on Sunday.
“Netanyahu expressed support for the concept of land swaps, and emphasized that he did not want to govern the West Bank and Gaza but rather to stop attacks from being launched from there,” read a February 2009 diplomatic cable describing a meeting between Netanyahu and a delegation led by Senator Benjamin Cardin.
Benjamin Netanyahu attempts to shift the world’s focus away from Israel’s blatant transgressions of international law in a public relations campaign to buy time.
According to the cable, Netanyahu laid out to the U.S. lawmakers a framework for his economic peace plan as the best option for a future peace deal with the Palestinians.
His idea was to begin “rapidly building a pyramid from the ground up” to allow the Palestinian West Bank to develop a strong and independent infrastructure.
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