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Was the speech by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, on the future State of Palestine newsworthy? CBS' substitute anchor Jeff Glor thought so. He introduced Richard Roth's report from Ramallah and followed up with an interview with Netanyahu himself. Glor told the prime minister to his face that his speech was "extraordinary." Neither NBC nor ABC concurred. They did not mention Netanyahu's talking points, even in passing. Israel's Arab neighbors seemed similarly unimpressed. Asked Glor: "Are you surprised so far at the negative reaction it has received from Palestinians and other Arab leaders?" "Yes I suppose I would like a better response and maybe it will sink in over time."
Netanyahu's proposal was that Palestine should demilitarize--"certainly not with an army," as CBS' Roth put it; that Israel's settlements on occupied Palestinian territory would continue to expand on their current property but would not expropriate new land; and that Palestine would be obliged to recognize Israel as "the Jewish state." As such, Netanyahu was presumably disowning Israel's current minority of Arab citizens, although Glor did not ask him about that.
CBS' Glor also asked Netanyahu whether he agreed with the protestors on the streets of Teheran that Iran's presidential election had been fixed. Netanyahu thought the question irrelevant: "It is a totalitarian state that perhaps has elections on occasion but we know the true nature of the Iranian regime."
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