Netanyahu Admitted That For 30 Years He Blocked The Creation Of A Palestinian State

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called "truth" all the accusations in recent years that he is not working for the Middle East peace process and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by creating a separate, Palestinian state.

At a press conference, asked why he had not withdrawn from the Oslo Accords that laid the foundations for it, given that he continued to criticize them, Netanyahu said: "I inherited the Oslo Accords. The decision to bring the Palestine Liberation Organization from Tunisia and place it at the heart of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza, was a decision made and implemented before I became prime minister. I thought it was a terrible mistake, and I still think so." (The quote is from The Times of Israel).

The agreements (the first being from 1993) made the PLO the representative of the Palestinian people, gave some control to a newly created Palestinian Authority over the West Bank and Gaza, and laid the foundations for a process that could eventually evolve into a sovereign Palestinian state.

Netanyahu was in power for most of this period: from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 until now, with a break of a year and a half. A frequent criticism of him is that even when he did not reject the peace process, he did his best to sabotage it.

"You and your journalist friends have been accusing me for almost 30 years of stopping the Oslo accords and obstructing the Palestinian state. That's true," Netanyahu said. "I am proud that I prevented the creation of a Palestinian state, because today everyone understands what that Palestinian state could have been after we saw the small Palestinian state in Gaza," he continued. "Everyone understands what would have happened if we had capitulated to international pressure and created such a state in Judea and Samaria, around Jerusalem and on the outskirts of Tel Aviv."

Netanyahu also said that many international actors supported his idea that the Palestinian Authority could have no role in Gaza after the war, without specifying who they were. He explained that when asked by US President Joe Biden about resolving the Palestinian conflict, he replied: "I told him that the Palestinians may have all the rights to control their lives, but none of the sovereign ones that threaten our lives."

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described his own role in the 1990s as a senior Israeli army officer in Jenin fighting terrorism and minimizing it. It is clear from his explanations that he too sees the process as a mistake.

Then came the Oslo accords, Gallant said, "and after a short time 500 armed Palestinian police arrived" in the Jenin area, "another 5,000 elsewhere in Judea and Samaria and 7,000 in Gaza." This began a process with grave consequences, including the massive proliferation of weapons. "The Oslo Accords started this process" and were full of mistakes.

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