Netanyahu, on the contrary, has and continues to pursue policies that increasingly isolate Israel, building fences instead of reaching out, and alienating Israel's closest friends (including the US) who revile him for his policies that undermine Israel's as well as their own interests in the Middle East.
Peres fully embraced the Arab Peace Initiative (API), which was introduced in 2002 and provides a framework for Israeli-Palestinian peace in the context of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, which could have led to the recognition of Israel by more than 50 Arab and Muslim states.
Netanyahu rejected the API off-hand, arguing that it was presented on a take it or leave it basis, when in fact he never contemplated negotiating peace with the Palestinians under any framework. Suggesting as he did in his UNGA speech that he welcomed the spirit of the API was nothing but a demagogic rendition to show his openness to negotiate, when in fact he wants to merely manage the conflict while further consolidating the occupation to the point of no return.
Peres was the last remaining key figure of Israel's founding generation who had a vision of where Israel should be in the future. However controversial or idiosyncratic he was, he never strayed from his vision to secure an independent, proud and democratic nation as the home of the Jewish people in perpetuity.
Netanyahu has no clue where Israel will or should be 10 or 15 years down the line. His policies are undercutting the democratic foundation of the country, and overtly discriminating against Israel's Arab population while maintaining the occupation and endangering the Jewish national identity of the state.
As Netanyahu attends Peres' funeral, he should remember that Peres was the statesman who understood that as long as Israel enjoys the upper hand, it must allow the Palestinians to live in a free and democratic state of their own.
Israelis and Palestinians are ordained to live side by side -- they must now chart a destiny of amity and peace, or be doomed together.
Netanyahu will do well to think whether he wants to be remembered as the statesman who realized Peres' dream, or the demagogue who led his people astray and shattered their millennium-old aspiration to finally live in peace.
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