Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday he told US President Joe Biden that he rejected Palestinian sovereignty in the Gaza Strip, in a call the day before.
For the first time in almost a month, the two leaders spoke over the phone on Friday. After the discussion, Biden expressed his belief that Netanyahu may still consent to some sort of Palestinian state.
“In his conversation with President Biden, Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated his policy that after Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement issued on Saturday.
On Thursday, Netanyahu had rejected Palestinian sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, saying it was incompatible with Israel’s need to have “security control over all the territory west of the (River) Jordan”.
Biden had said after the call on Friday that it was possible Netanyahu could come round to some form of two-state solution, seen for decades by diplomats as the best way to bring peace to the Middle East.
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“There are a number of types of two-state solutions. There’s a number of countries that are members of the UN that… don’t have their own militaries,” Biden told reporters after an event at the White House.
A senior Hamas official on Saturday dismissed Biden’s comments about the possibility of Israel agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“The illusion that Biden is preaching about a state of Palestine and its characteristics does not fool our people,” Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the Islamist group’s political bureau, said in a statement.
“Biden is a full partner in the genocidal war and our people do not expect any good from him.”
Following the October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas, Netanyahu has vowed to destroy the organization and demilitarize Gaza.
He is also becoming more and more resistive to US pressure to come up with a plan that incorporates Palestinian statehood in any form.
An AFP count based on official numbers indicates that 1,140 persons were killed as a consequence of Hamas’s strike, the majority of them were civilians.
