Benny Gantz also clarified that he would not sit in a government in which Benjamin Netanyahu was a prime minister or a minister.
Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel, Defense Minister Benny Gantz told 103 FM Monday morning as he pushed back at former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has attacked him on social media in the last day for his stance.
“Jerusalem is the united capital of the state of Israel, so it has been and so it will be,” Gantz said.
Gantz, Netanyahu, a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem and the Trump peace plan
Netanyahu on Sunday had tweeted the headline of an interview Gantz had given to a Saudi paper in 2020 in which had said there was room for a Palestinian capital in a united Jerusalem.
“The answer is no,” Netanyahu had tweeted, The issue of a united Jerusalem is one he often campaigns on and has in the past warned that his opposition would give it away to the Palestinians. He famously did so when he campaigned against former Labor party head Shimon Peres.
Gantz clarified in his radio interview that he had made those comments around the time that former US President Donald Trump had unveiled his peace plan, which called for a Palestinian capital in Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem that were on the opposite side of the security barrier. Netanyahu had also supported that plan.
Trump’s plan also called for a two-state resolution to the conflict. Gantz in his public comments since then has spoken of a resolution that involves two entities.
Gantz told the radio station that does not believe it is possible “to get to a permanent agreement [with the Palestinians] in the coming years.”
What needs to happen instead is to reduce the points of conflict and strengthen Palestinian self-governance over their own affairs, particularly their internal security.
It’s important, he said, to prevent the creation of a bi-national state “which no one wants,” he said.
With respect to a Palestinian foothold in Jerusalem, he said that there are people say that there are “civilian villages that Palestinians call Jerusalem, which is not in the metropolitan envelope of Jerusalem, and they can be defined as their capital.”
But he repeated that Jerusalem is Israel’s united capital.
Gantz also clarified that he would not sit in a government in which Netanyahu was a prime minister or a minister.