Former settler council head says Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is paying
lip-service to the two-state solution and that the annexation of the West Bank
is a “natural outcome.”
Dani Dayan, former chairman of the Council of
Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, said on Friday that the
two-state solution “never existed.”
Speaking to Stephen Sackur on the BBC
news show Hardtalk, Dayan said the views of the ultra-Right are “quite
realistic, as Israel is beginning to understand that the two-state solution never
existed, it was a mirage... you get closer to it, you reveal that it was just
hot air.”
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Continuing, Dayan blamed the failure not on Israel, or the
settlers, but on the “refusal of the Palestinians to accept it.”
The
former settler council head added that although he sought annexation of the West
Bank, it “will not happen in the near future, but it is a natural
outcome.”
Explaining his endorsement of Netanyahu over Bayit Yehudi
chairman Naftali Bennett, Dayan stated: “Elections are not a beauty pageant,”
citing the statesman-like qualities of the prime minister and his strong image
abroad.
“Politics is the art of the impossible,” Dayan said. “In an
election, you have to choose the party you identify with most... I really don’t
know if Netanyahu means it [to push for a two-state solution] or it is
tactical.”
He added that he liked much of Netanyahu’s settlement
construction plans, in spite of the 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech in which the
prime minister famously adopted the two-state solution.
In the speech,
Netanyahu accepted the two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict after
campaigning on a platform of “economic peace.”
“I see a political
attitude towards the Palestinians that I admire,” Dayan said.
When pushed
on the discriminatory comments made by Likudniks in recent times against
Palestinians, Dayan said such remarks were “an exception to the rule... I am not
voting for these quotes, but for a prime minister who will safeguard Israel’s
interest.”
“Netanyahu is beginning to understand... there is not going to
be a two-state solution,” he said.
Sackur questioned the former settler
council head on the issue of Palestinian rights in the West Bank, to which Dayan
responded that the Palestinians “live in a reality that they created.
“We
have to find a modest solution that is good to everyone. We can keep
trying to form two-states... Israel must take an active offensive to improve
human rights for the Palestinians,” Dayan said.
“Every check point that
is removed, rejoices me,” he said. “But you are right that they do not have full
political rights.
“I see the world as nationalist- centered. I respect
the Palestinians’ aspirations. But I understand them better than a liberal in
Tel Aviv or in London. This is why I fear them... their final
aspiration is to return to all of ‘Palestine.’”