T. Belman. The issue is not Jerusalem but Area C. Gants wants to preserve it for the future Palestinian state. The right wants to extend Israeli sovereignty over it.
Tired of the yes-Bibi/no-Bibi debate? How about the yes-Gantz/no-Gantz debate
I think it a travesty that there is such a divide on Bibi. Just as there is on Trump. The election should be about issues and not personalities.
Benny Gantz also clarified that he would not sit in a government in which Benjamin Netanyahu was a prime minister or a minister.
By TOVAH LAZAROFF, JERUSALEM POST STAFF 22.8.22
A GENERAL view of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City last year.
(photo credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)
Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Monday morning as he pushed back at former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attacked him on social media over the past day for his previously announced stance.
“Jerusalem is the united capital of the State of Israel – so it has been, and so it will be,” Gantz told Radio 103 FM.
Gantz, Netanyahu, a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem and the Trump peace plan
Netanyahu on Sunday tweeted the headline of an interview Gantz gave to a Saudi paper in 2020 in which he said there was room for a Palestinian capital in a united Jerusalem.
“The answer is no,” Netanyahu 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 leader Shimon Peres.
Gantz clarified in his radio interview on Monday that he had made those comments around the time 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 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 he did not believe it was 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, Gantz said.
It’s important to prevent the creation of a binational state, “which no one wants,” he said.
With respect to a Palestinian foothold in Jerusalem, Gantz said there are people who say 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 reiterated 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.
The “Palestinians” were invented in the 1960s as the Palestine Liberation Organization, and as such, are a rebel group who have no rights nor history on which to base any kind of state or independent entity on land taken from Israel. We tried giving land for a Palestinian entity in Gaza and got missiles and war in exchange. The “Palestinians” should be asbsorbed by Jordan, which was intended as the Palestinian state. There have been many suggestions on how to do this. I suggest a group be set up to discuss and study these suggestions.