Dayan: The two-state solution is a mirage

Dani Dayan on BBC .(Photo by: Screenshot)

By GABRIELLA TZVIA WEINIGER
01/19/2013

Former settler council head says Netanyahu paying lip-service to two state solution, says annexation of W. Bank "natural outcome."

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.’”

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