Oliver Stone was interviewing MK Benjamin Netanyahu in March 2002 when a bomb went off. A priceless exchange followed.
Stone looked out toward the explosion: “What’s up there? A settlement?”
Netanyahu: “Everything is a settlement to them. This is a settlement called Jerusalem."
Stone was filming an HBO documentary heavily skewed toward the Palestinian side. He had bought into the idea that the conflict was fundamentally about “settlements.”
At that exact moment, the Palestinian Authority’s own terror arm — the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (Fatah) — sent a 17-year-old girl, Ayat al-Akhras, to blow herself up at a supermarket in Jerusalem. She murdered two Israeli civilians and wounded 28 others.
This was everyday life for Israelis during the Second Intifada — the same “intifada” so many activists today want to “globalize.”
Netanyahu, then a senior Likud MK under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, cut through the illusion in real time.
To the Palestinian movement, every inch of Israel is a “settlement.” The problem was never 1967. It was always 1948 — and the very existence of a Jewish state in any part of the Land.
The Palestinian cause has never been about building a state next to Israel.
It has always been about destroying the one already there.