Report: Netanyahu Tells GOP Senators He Still Supports 2 States
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a delegation of Republican senators who visited Israel last week that he still supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Netanyahu stressed his support despite the fact that the Republican Party last month removed support for a two-state solution from its platform, the Times of Israel Wednesday citing Montana Sen. Steve Daines, a member of the delegation.
“In virtually every meeting we had, including with the prime minister, there was always hope that the parties will return to negotiations,” Daines told The Times of Israel after returning from the trip. “But those need to be bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Daines told the Israel-based news website that Netanyahu stood by his 2009 speech at Bar Ilan University, in which he called for “two peoples [to] live freely, side by side, in amity and mutual respect.”
Daines supports a two-state solution provided the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The two-state concept has long been a pillar of both Democratic and Republican policy in the region, and a stated policy of Netanyahu, although not of his government. The Democratic Party platform retained the party’s commitment to the two-state solution.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO