Likud ideologists seek to enshrine official stance: No Palestinian state
Netanyahu associates make efforts to stymie today’s vote
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party opposes the creation of a Palestinian state and must consider alternatives to the two-state solution, according to a proposal set to pass Tuesday in a meeting of the Likud’s ideological bureau.
Netanyahu helped lead efforts initiated by a group of Likud activists to pass a proposal opposing a Palestinian state in the party’s central committee in May 2002. It was opposed by thenprime minister and Likud leader Ariel Sharon and paved the way for his departure from the party.
As prime minister in June 2009, Netanyahu endorsed the two-state solution in a speech at Bar-Ilan University. His associates have tried to delay and prevent Tuesday’s vote, which could embarrass the prime minister at a sensitive time.
But Binyamin Regional Council Likud branch head Shevah Stern, who chairs the party’s Nationalist Forum, said that following the murder of Yosef, Chaya and Elad Solomon, this is the ultimate time to reinforce the proposal he initiated 15 years ago.
“I am not making problems for the prime minister,” Stern said. “We are not acting against the prime minister but we do want to have an influence on him and other ministers to follow the path of Likud, which is against a Palestinian state.”
Getting the ideological bureau to schedule Tuesday’s vote, set to take place in Ariel, took Stern more than a year. He needed support from a fifth of its members to initiate the meeting and put it on the agenda. He then used legal means to prevent a delay of the vote.
The proposal also would make the party officially oppose a Saudi peace plan that calls for unlimited Palestinian refugees to enter Israel. It would also require Netanyahu to start preparing for the possibility of the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, an issue that has been championed by the head of the ideological bureau, Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin.
Stern and his allies in the Nationalist Forum also intend to pass proposals calling for unlimited construction in Judea and Samaria and annexing their Jewish communities at a Likud central committee meeting that is expected to take place in September.
Netanyahu has been trying to stall and prevent those votes as well, telling a conference organized by the right-wing newspaper Makor Rishon on July 4 that he is on the Right, and he does not need anyone to strengthen him from the Right.
“If he’s on the Right, then that’s terrific,” Stern said. “Being on the Right means annexing the land. We don’t need to do just what he wants. The party has institutions, and they make decisions, too. He does not rule alone. He’s not a dictator.”