[Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu said that he still wanted “a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that he had not intended to reverse the position he took endorsing that in a 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University. “I haven’t changed my policy,” he said in the interview, his first since his resounding victory on Tuesday, which handed him a fourth term. “What has changed is the reality.”
“I don’t want a one-state solution; I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that, circumstances have to change,” he said. “I was talking about what is achievable and what is not achievable. To make it achievable, then you have to have real negotiations with people who are committed to peace.” . . .
“I wasn’t trying to suppress a vote,” he said [of his dire warnings that Arabs were voting in large numbers]. “I was trying to get something to counter a foreign-funded effort to get votes that are intended to topple my party, and I was calling on our voters to come out.”[1]
- [1]Jodi Rudoren and Michael D. Shear, “Israel’s Netanyahu Reopens Door to Palestinian State, but White House Is Unimpressed,” New York Times, March 19, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-elections-palestinian-state.html↩