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Israeli minister: Palestinian state in West Bank 'collective suicide' for Israel

December 16, 2014 at 4:03 pm

Israeli minister of strategic and intelligence affairs, Yuval Steinitz, has said that the unilateral Palestinian measures in the UN needs an “appropriate” Israeli response, in a statement released on Monday.

Palestinian newspapers reported excerpts from Steinitz’s statement, in which he said that, “asking the Palestinian Authority to establish a state in the whole [West Bank] is similar to asking Israel to commit a collective suicide.”

Steinitz warned that Hamas and ISIS would arrive in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem if such a step took place.

Meanwhile, Israeli energy and water minister, Silvan Shalom, warned that “any unilateral Palestinian measures will be met with unilateral Israeli measures.”

Shalom considered the prospective Palestinian action in the UN Security Council a “flagrant violation” for the Oslo peace agreement signed with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1993. “If this action succeeded, any bilateral agreement will be finished,” he added.

Earlier to this, an aide for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported by the Israeli radio saying that Netanyahu was to ask US Secretary of State John Kerry to veto any unilateral Palestinian action during the forthcoming meeting in Rome.

The aide said that the US always objects unilateral measures that might oblige Israel to allow the establishment of the Palestinian state. “Such measure leads to Hamas arrival to the West Bank and this will be destructive for Israel, Palestinians and the peace process,” he said.

The leader of the Israeli Hatnuah party, Tzipi Livni, also objected the Palestinian plan to go for a UN Security Council resolution. The Israeli radio reported Livni as saying that the Security Council would not accept the Palestinian proposal stipulating and end to the Israeli occupation even if the US did not veto it.

The Palestinian Authority submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council on Sunday to ask for an end for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands occupied in 1967, and is planning to seek a vote on it as early as this Wednesday.