Dichter: PM knows there can’t be a Palestinian state

Likud MK Avi Dichter rejected the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and called for the application of sovereignty in the settlements as he made two campaign stops this week in Judea and Samaria.“As far as I am concerned, there will be no Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel,” said Dichter, who chairs the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.“These things are well understood by Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and have been understood by previous prime ministers as well,” he said. “The Oslo Accords have failed. The idea that another state can be established between the State of Israel and Jordan doesn’t exist.”A Palestinian state by Israel’s side would constitute a national security risk, he said. This had been true under the former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat and it remains true under the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, he said.Dichter, who was the head of the Shin Bet from 2000-2005 and who had been its southern commander when the Olso Accords were declared in 1993, said he was certain someone was pulling his leg when they first described the plan.He also said the time had come to apply sovereignty to the West Bank settlements.Israelis who live in Ofra in Binyamin or in Gush Etzion deserve the same rights as those who live in Tel Aviv and Ashkelon, Dichter said.“If the solution is to apply Israeli law within the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, then the time has come to do so,” Dichter said on Sunday.He pledged to push for sovereignty for the settlements in the Knesset, when the new government is formed after the election.Dichter is one of many Likud politicians who have dismissed the idea of a Palestinian state in this election. Netanyahu, however, has stood by his 2009 speech in Bar-Ilan University, in which he spoke of two states for two peoples.