US President Joe Biden on Tuesday hit back at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for calling the “Oslo Accords” a mistake, and insisted that Israel must embrace the two-state solution.
Speaking at a fundraising event, the American leader criticized the “most conservative government in Israel’s history” for opposing the creation of a Palestinian state.
A day earlier, Netanyahu said during a tense meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “Oslo was the mother of all sins.”
He noted, as if it still needed to be noted, that the only difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is that “Hamas wants to destroy us here and now, and the PA wants to do it in stages.”
Biden thinks that Netanyahu is saying such things because he’s constrained by the ultra-nationalists in his coalition. “You cannot say there’s no Palestinian state at all in the future,” emphasized the president.
But the thing is, it’s not only Netanyahu, and it’s not only members of his coalition now saying that.
In a fiery speech to bereaved families during a Hanukkah candle-lighting event on Tuesday evening, former Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar was adamant:
“God forbid that after paying compound interest for the mistakes of the past, we return to the path of retreat, weakness and concessions.
“God forbid that after paying with the blood of our sons, we return to the illusions of the past.
“We will not agree to a Palestinian terrorist state – not in Judea and Samaria, and not in Gaza!”
Sa’ar is part of the emergency national unity government, but belongs to the opposition National Camp party under Benny Gantz. Following the war, he will go back to opposing Netanyahu politically, and if current polls prove accurate, will be a high-ranking minister in a future government with Gantz as prime minister.
Biden may yet find that the idea of a Palestinian state is no longer acceptable to many, if not most Israelis.
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