Biden: Netanyahu leading Israel in ‘wrong direction’

US Vice President Joe Biden said on Monday that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leading Israel in the “wrong direction”, The Washington Times reported.

Speaking to the US advocacy group J Street, Biden said: “I firmly believe that the action Israel’s government has taken over the past several years – the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalisation of outposts, land seizures – they’re moving us, and more important, they are moving Israel, in the wrong direction.”

He called these Israeli measures “counterproductive” and warned that they undermine the possibility of a two-state solution.

Biden also said that his recent visit with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not give him a “feeling encouraged about the prospects of peace in the immediate future”.