Did anyone like Netanyahu's speech?

Israeli right

Netanyahu threw them a lot of red meat: defending the settlements, demanding Israel remain a Jewish state, describing Iran as an existential threat. That was enough to satisfy some members of Likud, who praised it for its tough words. But it wasn't enough to satisfy some listeners, according to the Jerusalem Post:

[Member of Knesset] Danny Danon said that the acceptance of Palestinian aspirations for statehood was "one unnecessary sentence in a brilliant speech. It goes against the Likud platform and we will work in the Knesset faction and central committee to make sure it doesn't get implemented."

Likud is trying to portray Netanyahu's call for a Palestinian state as a response to American pressure. I don't know if that's true; Netanyahu has long opposed the idea, but maybe he's come around to it? Either way, the goal seems to be creating a rift between Netanyahu and the White House:

Kara concurred with Danon's belief that Netanyahu had given in to American pressure, terming the White House "a branch office of the Balad Party" and accusing the American administration of trying to harm his ability to live freely in Israel.

This Obama guy is really something. You'd think his hands are full with nationalizing the American economy and squashing capitalism. But no -- he still finds the time to dictate Israeli zoning law.

The left

The political left in Israel wasn't too hard on the speech. Kadima members said it "broke taboos"; Daniel Ben-Simon, leader of the Labor party, called it a "large step for the state of Israel." Largely that was due to Netanyahu's recognition of the need for a Palestinian state.

But some Kadima members pointed out what they saw as a hypocrisy in the speech. Netanyahu asked the Palestinians to negotiate "without preconditions," but then proceeded to lay down a number of his own preconditions. One critic, writing in Ha'aretz, went further, saying the speech was "colonialist" and reminiscent of George W. Bush's regional rhetoric:

Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a patriarchal, colonialist address in the best neoconservative tradition: The Arabs are the bad guys, or at best ungrateful terrorists; the Jews, of course, are the good guys, rational people who need to raise and care for their children.

And dovish groups in the U.S., like J Street, wanted the speech to go further on settlements and call for a full freeze.

Arab leaders

These reactions were perhaps the easiest to predict. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak said the speech "scuttled any chances for peace" in the region by refusing to give Palestinians the right of return. And a Syrian official said the plan "contains everything but peace" for much the same reasons.

Again, this is to be expected -- we're talking about Benjamin Netanyahu, remember, not exactly a popular figure in Cairo or Damascus. He'd still get a skeptical reaction even if he got up and offered to give the Palestinians all the land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.