Rather than solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state will perpetuate it, Minister-without-Portfolio and National Unity MK Gideon Sa’ar said on Wednesday.
“This is not about establishing a Palestinian state within the framework of resolving the historical conflict with Israel,” Sa’ar said at Joint Perspectives, a cooperative conference hosted by WELT and The Jerusalem Post to discuss the challenges and obstacles that have arisen in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre and the resulting war.
“This conflict will be solved only by direct negotiations. Rather, it’s a process where Palestinians won’t have to pay the price of compromise but will continue the conflict with Israel from an improved position of a state, which inherently undermines Israel’s ability to defend itself without them relinquishing any of their extreme demands: the return of ‘refugees’ and ‘Palestine – from the river to the sea.’ Such a move will perpetuate the conflict instead of resolving it,” Sa’ar said.
The full conference can be seen here.
Opposed to a two-state solution
Sa’ar, who is a member of Israel’s National Security Cabinet, said he was opposed to a two-state solution in general because “a Palestinian state will be a Hamas state that will destabilize the region and continue, alongside its extreme Islamist partners, efforts to achieve their goal: the destruction of Israel.”
Sa’ar’s remarks came in the wake of reports that the US State Department and other countries were considering the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state if Israel did not agree to enter negotiations over a two-state solution when the current fighting ceases.
In his speech, Sa’ar stressed the link between Hamas’s extreme Islamist ideology and the outbreak of antisemitism worldwide.
“It’s important to recognize the ideological sources of this murderous madness. According to Hamas, killing Jews is a religious command... According to Hamas’s charter, Jews were responsible for every negative historical event, including those in which they themselves were victims,” he said.
But the Palestinian Authority is no less antisemitic, Sa’ar argued.
“The Palestinian Authority is a major center of institutionalized antisemitism, which also thrives in its educational system. And its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has time and again voiced classic antisemitic expressions.
“Today, it is abundantly clear that the new antisemitism is against the state of the Jewish people. Classical antisemitism delegitimized and dehumanized Jews. The new antisemitism does the very same thing to their state. The calling card of today’s antisemitism is the delegitimization of Israel and the denial of its right to self-defense,” Sa’ar said.
The current war is a “multi-front jihadist onslaught” that is “military, ideological, political, and legal combined.”
Sa’ar concluded by calling “on every leader, on every freedom-loving nation and person: Exert all political pressure to help release the 134 hostages who are still held in Gaza in an inhumane manner.