Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier yesterday that “as long as he is the leader, a Palestinian state would never be established”.
He has in effect reversed 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. “Whoever moves to establish a Palestinian state or intends to withdraw from [the occupied] territory is simply yielding territory for radical Islamic terrorist attacks against Israel,” he said.
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.