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Israeli minister opposes Palestinian-state establishment proposal

February 14, 2017 at 12:41 am

All Israel’s cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state in the near term, Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said on Monday.

Speaking at the 14 B’Sheva Jerusalem conference, Erdan urged Israel to step up settlement construction, including in outlying areas of the West Bank, in what he described as a “clear price” for the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Erdan noted to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming meeting with US President Donald Trump saying: “We are all praying for the Prime Minister’s success. We all know his talents and his experience, and we are all looking at the eight difficult years he had with former US President Barack Obama, whose world view was so different than ours.”

Read: ‘Two-state solution is dying,’ say Euro MPs

“We have an historical opportunity to begin a new era, an era in which we can speak with pride about our Israel, and go back to saying Israel belongs to the Jewish nation, and keep emphasizing it,” he stimulated.

“We need to gather the best archaeologists in the world, so they can say, ‘Jerusalem has thousands of years of Jewish history. The Temple Mount was the holiest site for the Jewish people – and only for the Jewish people,” the Israeli minister stressed.

The highest-ranked Likud politician praised his government’s achievements on the security side saying: We have done many other things as well, and we are seeing the results. Today, personal security is completely different – even in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods. There has been a sharp drop in the number of terror attacks involving stones and firebombs.

“There is still a lot left to do, but the situation has improved considerably,” he added.

Erdan belongs to the right-wing Likud party, many of whose legislators often espouse a harder line than Netanyahu himself.

Commenting on Erdan’s remarks, the Palestine Liberation Organization official, Wasel Abu Youssef, said that “what the government of the extreme right in Israel does on the ground (that) prevents any chance of the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Also read: Israel to build first new West Bank settlement since 1990s

Palestinians seek a state in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured those areas in a 1967 war; it pulled its troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005.

Since Trump took office last month, Netanyahu has approved construction of 6,000 settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, drawing international condemnation which the White House did not join.

In recent days, however, the Trump administration has taken a more nuanced position, saying building new settlements or expanding existing ones may not be helpful in achieving peace.