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“This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel,” Netanyahu, who has long opposed Palestinian statehood, said.
The comments prompted an immediate rebuke from the White House.
“We obviously see it differently,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.
He said President Joe Biden would “not stop working” towards a two-state solution. The term refers to the recognition of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said: “There is no way to solve their long-term challenges to provide lasting security and there is no way to solve the short-term challenges of rebuilding Gaza and establishing governance in Gaza and providing security for Gaza without the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
The Palestinians seek Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem for their state. Those areas were captured by Israel in 1967.
Netanyahu said a Palestinian state would become a launching pad for attacks on Israel.
Palestinians inspect destruction after an Israeli strike in Rafah, southern Gaza, on January 18.Credit: AP
Israel launched the offensive after an unprecedented cross-border attack by Hamas on October 7 that killed 1200 people and took some 250 others hostage. Roughly 130 hostages are believed by Israel to remain in Hamas captivity. The war has stoked tensions across the region, threatening to ignite other conflicts.
Israel’s retaliatory assault, one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, has killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, caused widespread destruction and uprooted over 80 per cent of the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes.
The staggering cost of the war has led to increasing calls from the international community to halt the offensive.
Demonstrators hold orange balloons at a Tel aviv rally in solidarity with Kfir Bibas, an Israeli boy who spent his first birthday, on Thursday, in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.Credit: AP
After initially giving Israel wall-to-wall support in the early days of the war, the US, Israel’s closest ally, began to express misgivings and urged Netanyahu to spell out his vision for post-war Gaza.
The US has said the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority, which governs semi-autonomous zones in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, should be “revitalised” and returned to Gaza. Hamas ousted the authority from Gaza in 2007.
US Senator Bernie Sanders also weighed in, saying the sustained Israeli bombardment of Gaza was a “tragedy for which we, the United States, are complicit”.
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Speaking on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the two-state solution was the best way to protect Israel, unify moderate Arab countries and isolate its arch-enemy, Iran.
Without a “pathway to a Palestinian state,” he said, Israel would not “get genuine security”.
At the same conference, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, said the kingdom was ready to establish full relations with Israel as part of a larger political agreement. “But that can only happen through peace for the Palestinians, through a Palestinian state,” he said.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks during a bipartisan candlelight vigil with hostage families to mark 100 days since the Hamas attacks on Israel, outside the US Capitol in Washington.Credit: Bloomberg
Mexico and Chile expressed “growing worry” on Friday (AEDT) over escalating violence in Gaza in a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over possible crimes.
In a statement, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry argued that the ICC was the proper forum to establish potential criminal responsibility, “whether committed by agents of the occupying power or the occupied power”.
The statement cited “numerous reports from the United Nations that detail many incidents that could constitute crimes under the ICC’s jurisdiction”.
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