ALL Benjamin Netanyahu's pent up disgust with the peace process he inherited, his contempt for the Labour government he succeeded, and his distaste for his ostensible peace partner, Yasser Arafat, emerged yesterday at a press conference convened by the Israeli Prime Minister in Jerusalem, writes David Horovitz.
Surrounded by a defensive shield of top ministers and security chiefs, he vigorously refused to take any responsibility for this week's explosion of Israeli Palestinian violence. Instead placing all blame on the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Arafat, and on the Labour governments that had legitimised him.
He made clear for the first time that he had ordered the opening of a new entrance to an underground tunnel in Jerusalem the move that provoked the violence - as a point of principle. It was unacceptable, he said for Israel, "the sovereign power in Jerusalem", to be expected to "freeze activities" in the city, such as the tunnel project, because Arafat might not like it.
The new tunnel entrance, which he emphasised posed no conceivable threat to holy religious sites in the area, had been seized upon by Mr Arafat as a pretext to incite violence.
The eruption of violence had been "clearly directed by the Palestinian Authority", he said. There had been "a huge wave of incitement". And if it hadn't been the tunnel, the Prime Minister asserted, Mr Arafat would simply have searched for another pretext.
Mr Netanyahu said he was ready to resume negotiations with the Palestinians, and to meet Mr Arafat "my hand is stretched out in peace".
In withering tones, he accused the Palestinian leadership of utterly violating the terms of the peace accords - not just in the last few days of gunfire, but during the previous three years of Labour government rule in Israel indicating that he believed Mr Arafat had at least tacitly facilitated the series of Islamic extremist suicide bombings between 1994 and March of this year.
"There was no security," he said. "There was no reciprocity."