Only the knave would have believed that far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu really endorsed a Palestinian state. The thuggish and vulgar leader, who once told a gathering of Israeli college students that the nation should have used world distraction by the Tiananmen Square massacre to forcibly evict at least 100,000 Palestinians; has long opposed a Palestinian state.

He only very recently paid lip service to a Palestinian state after months of pressure from the Obama administration. But this clearly was no endorsement. Netanyahu was no doing this out of his own accord and made it clear as he visibly resented uttered the word “state” any near “Palestinian”. And the “state” that Bibi imagines is anything but. Netanyahu said that he would accept, as if it is up to him to rule in the end, a Palestinian state if it meet certain conditions. But these conditions would negate the whole point of sovereign statehood - no military, consent to Israeli control of air space, no ability to sign treaties, ect... - that any agreement would just another mutation of Israeli occupation and not independence. Netanyahu wants to confine Palestinians to serfdom to Zionism. He knows the Palestinians would never accept such conditions, and that is the point.

Bibi plays the peace card, pretending that he wants a two-state solution, but then sets conditions that the Palestinians can never reasonably accept [The Economist, by the way, also makes this point], and when the Palestinians reject his “offer”, Netanyahu then will go to the United States and say “see, I told you the Palestinians do not want peace, I want peace, but those Palestinians just do not want to negotiate with me.” And as sure as your born, the Israel lobby will back him to the hill and recite Ebbn’s stupid, lying cliche that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Bibi was positioning himself to be the opponent of peace while pretending to actually favor it.

But his own father has destroyed his public relations ploy:

Channel 2 reported Wednesday night that the prime minister had told his father, 100-year-old historian Benzion Netanyahu, that he purposely set the conditions knowing that the Palestinians would never agree to them.

Poor Bibi, he thought he was so clever. All his office could say to this was that Channel 2 was being mean taking advantage of a 100-year-old man. Yes, how dare they! I mean, if Bibi pere was 80 he would know to keep up with the lie, but know the old fart is 100, senile and just, well, prone to tell the truth.

And we can’t have that, can we now?