Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C. Sunday in a video call and said that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a single state for both people, but rather a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes Israel.
Advertisement
19 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings and shootings. The authors – economist Avner Halevi and Gilead Sher, a former chief negotiator with the Palestinians – said this would require removing about 100,000 settlers, while others living close to Israel’s de facto border would remain pending a future negotiation.
In the latest incident, in a Jewish neighborhood in west Jerusalem on Sunday, a Palestinian rammed his auto into a passerby, slightly injuring him, and then got out of the vehicle and stabbed another man, who suffered superficial wounds, before security forces shot the attacker dead, police said. Palestinians say it is rooted in frustration over years of failed talks and lack of hope of gaining statehood.
Kerry told a conference on Israeli affairs in Washington on Saturday that through its continued occupation of the West Bank, Israel could make it impossible to partition the land between Jewish and Palestinian states. Violence erupted over tensions at a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and quickly escalated and spread.
Mr Kerry also called on the Palestinian leadership to stop “incitement” and condemn violent attacks.
The Secretary of State said that Israel needs to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’ position in the West Bank, but that Abbas must change his rhetoric.
While the violence has focused mainly on the West Bank, Israeli-occupied Arab east Jerusalem and the Palestinian coastal enclave of the Gaza Strip have also seen deadly clashes. Opposition politicians, intellectuals and retired military commanders are issuing increasingly strident warnings that never-ending violence awaits if Israel continues to occupy millions of angry Palestinians who can not vote in its national elections.
A spokesperson for Magen David Adom emergency services said four Israelis were treated after the incident, but said one of them appeared to have suffered an anxiety attack and another a heart attack.
Addressing Swedish lawmakers on Friday, Wallstrom denounced the nearly daily Palestinian knife, gun or car-ramming attacks but urged Israel to avoid excessive force. It came after a scorching speech to the forum the previous evening by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warning that Israel’s settlement policies were leading toward a one-state outcome.
The World Court says that the settlements Israel has built there are illegal, a view that Israel has repeatedly disputed.
Advertisement
Netanyahu insisted on Sunday his country was not heading towards becoming a “binational state”.
