Israeli minister says PM Lapid uses UN speech for electoral gains

Israeli Interior Minister and head of the right-wing Jewish Home Party, Ayelet Shaked said the Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid is using the United Nations as part of his election campaign, according to the Hebrew Channel 7.

Commenting on Lapid’s support for the establishment of a Palestinian state during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Shaked said “his words are meaningless, and he does not represent the Israeli government, but only himself.”

She pointed out that according to the coalition agreements the agreed upon Israeli policy is that the Palestinian issue has ended, “so it was and so it will be.”

“Unfortunately, this is not the first government in which I serve in which the prime minister decides to say hollow slogans about a Palestinian state. I was when Netanyahu did that, and even more so in 2014, when he sent Tzipi Livni to conduct negotiations on his behalf on the establishment of a Palestinian state;” she added.

“Netanyahu has even tried to bring Herzog into the government in 2016 in disguised attempts to negotiate with the Palestinians, and I’m the only one in the political system today who has managed to remove the Palestinian issue from the agenda for the past ten years,” Shaked said.

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