DayofPal– Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the prospect of a Palestinian state as “nothing more than folly” during the JNS International Policy Summit on Sunday.
Addressing an audience of ambassadors and international dignitaries, Netanyahu lashed out at long-standing international efforts to secure peace through a two-state solution.
“We already tried a Palestinian state in Gaza — and you saw what that brought,” Netanyahu said, referencing the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, without acknowledging the subsequent 17-year blockade that crippled the coastal enclave’s economy and society.
Netanyahu’s comments come as Israel faces mounting global criticism for its ongoing military campaign in Gaza, described by many human rights groups as a genocide. During his remarks, Netanyahu recounted a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the early days of the war.
He said Scholz, after viewing Israeli-produced footage, likened the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on Israeli military sites to Nazi atrocities, a comparison Netanyahu rejected.
“The Nazis tried to hide their crimes,” Netanyahu said. “These people, however, film their brutality.” He also repeated graphic allegations of atrocities, including claims of raped women, burnt babies, and beheadings, many of which have been debunked, with Israeli officials later admitting that some reports were false or unverified.
Netanyahu also took aim at the United States, revealing tensions with Washington over Israel’s military strategy in Gaza. According to the prime minister, the Biden administration threatened to halt military aid if Israel expanded its ground operations.
“We told them we are not a satellite state of the U.S.,” Netanyahu declared defiantly.
Despite Washington’s public declarations that Israel seeks peace while Palestinians resist it, facts on the ground tell a different story.
Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, the majority of whom are descendants of refugees expelled during the 1948 Nakba, have lived under a suffocating Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2007.
Israel even implemented a controversial “calorie count” policy, meticulously controlling food supplies to Gaza in what critics called a deliberate act of collective punishment.
The blockade has plunged Gaza into deep poverty, crippled its healthcare system, and left its population dependent on humanitarian aid for survival.
Many Gazans, already displaced from their ancestral homes, now face a renewed catastrophe under relentless bombardment, with little hope of return or relief in sight.
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