Israel’s government this week heatedly debated how and if to restart peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, as US Secretary of State John Kerry returned to the region to continue pushing the two sides back to the table.
Meeting with Kerry in Jerusalem on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel “wants to restart the peace talks with the Palestinians. …I hope the Palestinians want [this] as well…we ought to be successful for a simple reason: When there’s a will, we’ll find a way.”
But fiery discussions in the Knesset earlier in the week put an end to any illusions that Israel’s new government is anywhere close to a unified position regarding the peace process.
At a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said the government’s goal was to restart peace talks with the Palestinians as soon as possible.
Just days earlier Livni had told Army Radio that there is no chance of reaching a peace deal with Hamas, with which the Palestinian Authority continues to seek reconciliation, and which Palestinian voters continuously put into power.
Nevertheless, Livni insisted that birthing a Palestinian state is in Israel’s interests, and that this is the baseline of renewed peace talks. More right-wing members of the government countered by stating that a two-state solution was not an official policy, even if it had been accepted by individual members of the government.
“Two states for two peoples is not the government’s official position,” said MK Orit Strock of the Jewish Home party, interrupting Livni. “It is not part of the government’s guiding principles, and for good reason. This is perhaps Netanyahu’s position and your position, but it has not been accepted as the government’s position.”
MK Moti Yogev, also of Jewish Home, added that “two nations for two peoples is disconnected from reality.”
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