Sa’ar: Time to seek alternatives to 2-state solution

Education minister's comments represent a break from Netanyahu’s declared support for a Palestinian state.

By HERB KEINON
Saar 311 (photo credit: Sasson Tiram)
Saar 311
(photo credit: Sasson Tiram)
Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Tuesday that alternatives to a two-state solution should be sought since a Palestinian state would endanger Israel.
Sa’ar, a Likud MK, is considered a close ally of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and his comments represent a break from Netanyahu’s declared support for a two-state solution.
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“The upheavals in the region, the strengthening of radical Islam everywhere, the Palestinian unilateralism in the international arena and their positions regarding Israel obligate us to ask questions about our readiness to establish a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria,” he said at a ceremony dedicating a new dormitory at the Ariel University Center of Samaria..
The minister said it was very clear that the establishment of a Palestinian state would provide an improved springboard for the continued Palestinian struggle against Israel. As a result of the withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005, coupled with terrorist elements digging in in Sinai, Israel was close to becoming surrounded by terrorist bases, he said.
He declared that Israel would not risk its security and future on “foolish concepts and illusions that are not based in reality. The time has come to disengage from the idea that peace is connected to uprooting Jews from their homes.”