Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday ruled out any deal with the Palestinians unless they recognise Israel as the Jewish State and give up their refugees’ right of return.
And he said Israel and the Palestinians were getting further away from reaching a peace deal which would end the decades-long conflict, with US-led peace talks bogged down in a bitter dispute on the question of Israel as a Jewish State. “Palestinians say they will never recognise a Jewish State and that they will never give up on the right of return,” Netanyahu said in remarks on Israeli public radio.
“I want to make clear that I will not accept an agreement that does not cancel the (refugees’) right of return and which does not include Palestinian recognition of the Jewish State which are the basic justified conditions vital for security of Israel,” he added. US Secretary of State John Kerry is facing an uphill struggle to get the two sides to agree on a framework which would guide the talks past an April 29 deadline and allow them to continue to the end of the year, and that includes a clause relating to the issue of the Jewish State. But the Palestinians have flatly refused the request.
Netanyahu’s remarks touched on one of the most thorny questions of the current talks, and one which looks likely to derail intensive US efforts to extend the negotiations beyond a looming April deadline. The Palestinians have refused to recognise Israel as the Jewish state, saying this would deny their historical narrative and effectively cancel out the right of their refugees to return to homes they fled from or were forced out of during the 1948 war which accompanied Israel’s creation.
last week, in Washington, Netanyahu publicly called on Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to accept the Jewish state. The Palestinians denounced the call as effectively putting the final nail in the coffin of the peace talks accusing Nethanyu of blocking negotiations.