Netanyahu: With him, never 2 states
Stance reversed on election eve; Palestinians say his true colors now show
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Monday that as long as he is the leader, a Palestinian state would not be established, reversing his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Netanyahu made the assertion on the eve of an election in which he is trailing in the polls. He has been campaigning aggressively, appealing to conservatives for support.
“I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to radical Islam against the state of Israel,” he said in a video interview published on the NRG website. “Anyone who ignores this is sticking his head in the sand. The left does this time and time again. We are realistic and understand.”
Asked if he meant that a Palestinian state would not be established if he were to continue as Israel’s prime minister, Netanyahu replied: “Correct.”
The comments reversed a 2009 speech in which Netanyahu endorsed the concept of two states for two peoples between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Soon after starting his third term in June 2009, Netanyahu said he would accept a Palestinian state if it were demilitarized and recognized Israel as a Jewish state. His words, delivered at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv, were the foundation of a series of U.S.-backed efforts to revive peace negotiations that ultimately crashed in April. Earlier this month, Netanyahu said his 2009 remarks
were no longer relevant because of unrest across the Middle East.
Palestinian officials quickly seized on Netanyahu’s comments.
“Netanyahu did everything in his power to undermine the two-state solution,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. “I hope his statements and actions will be an eye-opener.”
“To those who say he is doing this for electioneering — no, that is Netanyahu,” Erekat said. “I think he wanted to destroy a two-state solution, not create two states.”
Wasel Abu Youssef, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, said Netanyahu’s latest statement shows he was “never serious” about a twostate solution.
“It’s clear that Israel’s strategic plan is to keep building more settlements,” he said in a phone interview from Ramallah. “The only option we have is to seek the involvement of the International Criminal Court,” where Palestinians are pursuing war crimes charges against Israel.
Reaching a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict has been a top foreign policy priority for President Barack Obama.
U.S. State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said Monday that the U.S. will work with whoever wins the Israeli election.
Netanyahu’s comments were reported as he visited Har Homa, a Jerusalem neighborhood where construction on land Israel captured in the 1967 war ignited international anger. Netanyahu said he had authorized that construction during his first term to block Palestinians from expanding Bethlehem and to prevent a “Hamas-tan” for militants from sprouting in the hills nearby, referring to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu stood next to maps of Har Homa, one from 1997 that showed its empty hillsides, and one showing its roughly 4,000 apartments today. A further 2,000 are under construction or planned.
“It was a way of stopping Bethlehem from moving toward Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said Monday of his approval of Har Homa, against U.S. wishes, in 1997.
Netanyahu has long heralded Israel’s right to build anywhere in Jerusalem, but he generally says that his expansion of settlements — which most world leaders consider illegal — do not materially affect the map for a potential two-state solution. His acknowledgment that Har Homa was intended to disrupt Palestinian development between Bethlehem and Jerusalem — which the Palestinians see as their future capital — came as he sought to win back votes for his Likud party.
Palestinians and their international supporters staged big protests against Har Homa in the 1990s because of its location at Jerusalem’s southern edge, arguing that preventing a connection between Bethlehem and the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem threatened the viability of a future Palestinian state.
“He has confirmed verbally for the first time what we have denounced for years,” said Xavier Abu Eid, a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. “That Har Homa is not about an innocent ‘Jerusalem neighborhood’ on occupied land, but about splitting occupied East Jerusalem from Bethlehem.”
Har Homa, one of about a dozen Jewish areas on land that was occupied by Jordan before 1967 and annexed into Jerusalem by Israel after the war, is home to 25,000 people today. Most were drawn not by ideology but by the large apartments, parks and playgrounds and lower prices than in the city center.
CRUCIAL VOTE
The center-left Zionist Union alliance, Netanyahu’s main opponent, has emphasized pocketbook issues throughout the campaign. So have two centrist contenders, the Yesh Atid party of Yair Lapid, and Kulanu, headed by Moshe Kahlon, a former minister who quit Likud because of its choices on housing and other economic matters.
With polls showing that Likud is trailing the Zionist Union, Netanyahu in recent days called on Kahlon’s supporters to “come home to the Likud,” and Sunday he promised to make the Kulanu leader finance minister.
Kahlon rebuffed the offer. He has not said whether he would recommend Netanyahu or Isaac Herzog of the Zionist Union to be prime minister.
Netanyahu dissolved his government in December and ordered the new election, two years ahead of schedule, in the belief that he would cruise to a new term.
On Monday, it was Herzog, Netanyahu’s chief rival, who appeared confident.
Visiting his party headquarters, Herzog, a trained lawyer and scion of a prominent political family, talked about a “crucial” vote for the country and warned against splitting the anti-Netanyahu vote among the various centrist parties.
“Whoever wants an upheaval has to vote for us,” Herzog said.
Netanyahu has focused more on his right flank, appearing at a rally Sunday evening in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv that was organized by settlers. Many in the crowd, estimated at 25,000 people, had been bused in from the occupied West Bank, according to local news reports.
In the interview with NRG, a website tied to the newspaper Makor Rishon, which largely serves settlers, Netanyahu also said he would continue construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“There is a real threat here that a left-wing government will join the international community and follow its orders,” Netanyahu said. “There is going to be an international initiative to take us back to the 1967 lines and divide Jerusalem. These are real things. This is going to come, and we need to form a solid, strong national government headed by Likud in order to ward off these initiatives.”
In Har Homa, Netanyahu said Herzog and his running mate, Tzipi Livni, had “condemned” some building initiatives in Jerusalem. (They have criticized the timing of announcements for inflaming tensions with the Palestinians and with Israel’s allies, but have agreed with Netanyahu that existing Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, including Har Homa, should not be uprooted.)
Also Monday, the Zionist Union announced that it had dropped a plan to rotate the premiership between Herzog of the Labor party and Livni of the smaller Hatnua faction, making clear that Herzog was the sole leader.
The rotation agreement had been seen by some voters as a sign of weakness and Netanyahu had focused much of his attack on the less popular Livni.
In an interview on Israel’s Channel 2, Herzog said that his partnership with Livni was “stronger than ever.”
Herzog, who has vowed to revive peace efforts with the Palestinians, repair ties with the U.S. and reduce the growing gaps between rich and poor, predicted an “upheaval” was imminent.
“We are united in our task to change the government,” he said. “The choice tomorrow is between desperation and hope, and the hope of the greater good for this country is change of the government.”
Yesh Atid’s Lapid made a campaign stop in the coastal city of Netanya, where he accused both Netanyahu and Herzog of working outside deals with special interest groups. He said only he was tackling the real issues facing the Israeli middle class.
Exit polls are expected immediately after voting stops at 10 p.m. tonight. But the true victor may not be known for several weeks.
Under Israel’s electoral system, no party has ever won an outright majority in the 120-member parliament. Instead, the party with the best chance of forming a coalition — usually the largest party — is given the chance to form a coalition. That decision is made by the country’s president, Reuven Rivlin.
Since neither Likud nor the Zionist Union is expected to earn more than a quarter of the votes, Rivlin will meet with party leaders to determine who should be prime minister, followed by a period of negotiations to assemble a coalition.