“We’re pretty sure [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s ship has sailed,” said the senior diplomat. “Do you have any idea where he’s heading?” the man asked. “Is the prime minister really planning to advance toward a two-state solution?”

I answered that I wasn’t sure whether Netanyahu himself could answer his question because as far as I know, the prime minister himself has not decided where he wants to take the negotiations with the Palestinians. But, I added, the more interesting question in my mind is not what Bibi wants to do about the conflict, but what he can do. Even if the concerns he has been expressing recently about Israel turning into a binational state are valid, it appears that his horses have bolted. It is highly doubtful whether the Likud party organs — from the Knesset faction to the party’s central assembly — would have even voted nowadays in favor of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. In fact, how many Knesset members from the right wing of the coalition believe in the article that promises “complete equality to all citizens,” including Arab citizens? How many of them support freedom of “religion, conscience, language, education and culture, regardless of religion, race and sex?”

Recent statements by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, his deputy Danny Danon, deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely and Knesset member Miri Regev (not to mention Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett and his friends in the HaBayit HaYehudi Party) make clear that they are not losing any sleep over the possible loss of Israel’s Jewish and democratic character. As far as they are concerned, there never was and never will be a Palestinian partner for peace. If it were up to Knesset members from the right, they would have erected a tent on the roof of the Mukata’a in Ramallah and flown a blue-and-white Israeli flag on top of it. Just who is this [US Secretary of State] John Kerry, anyway? In the words of Israel’s Zionist socialist (meaning, pragmatic') first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, “It doesn’t matter what the Gentiles say. What’s important is what the Jews do.”

Nonetheless, when those “gentiles” threatened to act (as they did in the 1956 Kadesh Operation in the Sinai), the “old man” knew how to step back from his vision of a “Third Kingdom of Israel.”  Netanyahu, who today sits on Ben-Gurion’s chair, received a handful of reminders recently that the Gentiles do more than just talk. Last month [May], 13 of the 27 member states of the European Union decided to label products made in the settlements. The ambassador from one of these countries told me that Israeli exporters should be thanking them for this move. In the absence of labeling allowing consumers to know which products are made in Israel and which originate in the occupied territories, many people in his country had started boycotting all products labeled “Made in Israel,” just to be on the safe side.