Likud MK: Netanyahu’s heart isn’t in two-state solution

A parliamentarian in Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party has said that Likud shares a one-state vision where Palestinians live under a Jewish state, and that Netanyahu only talks about two states because he feels obliged to.

Miki Zohar was speaking by video to J-TV alongside the Zionist Union’s Yossi Yona, a fellow Member of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) in a debate about the continued viability – and desirability – of a two-state solution. Zohar disagreed with Yona, saying a Palestinian state was “very bad, very dangerous”.

Challenging Zohar’s idea that Palestinians should live in a Greater Israel, provided they recognise it as Jewish, host Alan Mendoza asked: “How can you have a state that is one thing and not the other, when almost half the population is ‘the other’?”

Zohar suggested that the answer lay in city-based municipalities, each with a degree of autonomy, but said those living in Palestinian municipalities would not be allowed to vote in Israeli elections.

“Most of the members of Likud don’t believe in a two-state solution,” said Zohar, arguing that Netanyahu himself felt obligated to pay lip-service to it because of the commitments made by past Israeli governments.

“The prime minister can convince us different sometimes… the prime minister said he is obligated to the idea, he never said he believes in it, and I think this is a big difference.”