Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared there will be not be a Palestinian state so long as he is Prime Minister, reversing his prior support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the eve of Israel’s parliamentary elections.
“I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands, is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel,” the three-term Prime Minister said, according to the New York Times translation of the interview posted to website NRG on Monday.
When the reporter asked if that meant he would not establish a Palestinian state were he to win re-election, Netanyahu replied, “Correct.”
Netanyahu, whose Likud party is trailing behind the center-left Zionist Union alliance, once expressed support for the idea of two-state solution in a 2009 speech.
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Write to Nolan Feeney at nolan.feeney@time.com