Mr. Netanyahu reaffirms that he is willing to make mutual compromises with the Palestinian Authority, but the Palestinian refusal to negotiate directly without preconditions belies their true reticence to living peaceably alongside Jewish Israel.
Update 12 November: Aaron Klein in World Net Daily:
Obama's Israel squeeze: Worse than you know
Demands Jewish state retreat from territory vital for survival
PA official told WND the Obama administration instead has adopted the Palestinian position that the Jordan Valley should become part of a future Palestinian state entirely.
The official said the U.S. had proposed that international troops, along with Jordanian and Palestinian forces, would patrol the area.
The Jordan Valley encompasses a massive swath of territory. Israeli security analysts and commentators long have argued the country is indefensible without the valley.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated multiple times the Jordan Valley is so vital to Israel's security that Israel must control it in the future.
Netanyahu himself said at a Knesset faction meeting last February that Israel could never agree to withdraw from the Jordan Valley under any peace agreement signed with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu told the Israel's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the Jordan Valley's strategic importance along the eastern border of the West Bank made it impossible for Israel to withdraw.
The Jordan Valley runs from Lake Tiberias in the north to northern Dead Sea in the south. It continues another 96 miles south of the Dead Sea to Aqaba along the Jordanian border. The Jordan Valley forms the border between Israel and Jordan in the north, and the eastern strip of the strategic West Bank in the south.
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