It's Not Just Cream That Rises To The Top....

Not that nations don't have the right to pick their own leaders, but sometimes....

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he'd 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.

This is a perfectly fine demand - a perfectly reasonable demand. Except for one thing:

"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....

It's a two-way street. If Israel won't recognize the right of Palestinians to a free, independent state, it has no business trying to impose that as a precondition on negotiations with Hamas or other Palestinian factions.

Netanyahu ... has instead floated the idea of offering Palestinians limited rights that would fall short of independence.

There's a word for that. It eludes me. Can somebody help me out?

Yossi Alpher, a former official with Israel's Mossad spy agency and a co-founder of the bitterlemons.org Middle East political Web site, said that Netanyahu's conditions could be a poison pill that prevents any peace talks from getting under way.

Ya think? Ya think, just maybe, that's Netanyahu's intention?