"The vast majority of the Israeli public, between 75% and 80%, reject another Palestinian terror state, which this time would overlook Ben-Gurion Airport," Dani Diker told JNS.
In the hours leading up to the U.N. Council’s unanimous vote, 13-0, on Monday to approve a U.S.-drafted resolution endorsing Washington’s 20-point plan for Gaza, experts told JNS that Israelis worry about the plan’s “pathway” to Palestinian statehood. Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, said the “deterioration” was due to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “silence,” and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli national security minister, said his party would not be part of any government that agrees to a Palestinian state.
“It’s not only the right-wing ministers that are against this,” Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told JNS. Diker’s organization found in a poll that between 75% and 80% of Israelis “reject another Palestinian terror state, which this time would overlook Ben-Gurion Airport,” he told JNS.
It’s unfair to blame Netanyahu, who wants to maintain close ties with U.S. President Donald Trump and keep the possibility open to normalizing with Saudi Arabia, according to Diker, who said that Trump has been making “enormous” efforts to bring Riyadh into the Abraham Accords. Israel doesn’t want to come across as a “killjoy” and pour cold water on the U.S.-sponsored plan, according to Diker. (Read More)
