Israel Quickly Recalls Official Statement Supporting Peace Talks

Officials Blame 'Gaffe' on Polish Government

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s two-day visit to Poland is expected to be the usual straightforward combination of PR stops and tortured attempts to make the Holocaust all about Iran.

But for now the Israeli government is playing a desperate game of damage control related to the joint statement issued by the Israeli and Polish government in support of peace talks, and which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office quickly disavowed.

The problem, from the Israeli perspective, is that the statement was way too reasonable, including calls for both sides to not only put aside preconditions but to avoid “unilateral steps,” which officials quickly realized could be seen as criticizing Israel’s feverish expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu’s office disavowed the statement and went on to downplay the incident, saying that no Israeli official ever even read the document before Netanyahu signed off on it, and that the Polish government was to blame for the unduly reasonable wording.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.