Israel has an “arsenal of possible responses” it can deploy in response to a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.
Netanyahu, who did not spell out what steps Israel would take, said he preferred “not going” down that unilateral path “because it is a negative direction.”
The prime minister said he had spoken recently with Chilean President Sebastián Piñera in an effort to prevent Santiago from recognizing a Palestinian state – something a number of Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador, have done in recent weeks. Uruguay announced that it would recognize Palestinian statehood in 2011.
According to the prime minister, such recognition distances negotiations and makes peace more unlikely, because it strengthens the Palestinians’ sense that they can get what they want without negotiations.
Read more at JPost.com.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.