Israeli premier rejects Kerry’s warning of collapse of Palestinian state

Kerry had warned on Saturday about the dangers of the possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority.

While the violence has focused mainly on the West Bank, Israeli-occupied Arab east Jerusalem and the Palestinian coastal enclave of the Gaza Strip have also seen deadly clashes.

Addressing Swedish lawmakers on Friday, Wallstrom denounced the nearly daily Palestinian knife, gun or car-ramming attacks but urged Israel to avoid excessive force.

A Palestinian was shot dead after he allegedly wounded three Israelis in a stabbing attack in the center of Jerusalem on Saturday night, Israeli police said.

The row with Sweden comes amid attempts by Israel to exclude the European Union from the Palestine-Israel peace process following an European Union decision to label goods produced on Jewish-only West Bank settlements as such.

In addition, the top USA diplomat warned against the security consequences for Israel if the Palestinian Authority (PA) were to collapse.

At his weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu said, ‘Israel will not be a binational state, but in order to have peace, the other side needs to decide that it wants peace as well’.

FILE – In this Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2015 file photo, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, looks on as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office, in Jerusalem.

The “root cause of the problem”, Netanyahu said in a video address Sunday to the annual Saban Forum, is that “the Palestinians have not yet been willing to cross that conceptual bridge, the emotional bridge of giving up the dream of not a state next to Israel, but of a state instead of Israel”. “It is simply not a viable option”, he added.

“It is important that that not become a slogan, not become a throw-away phrase, that it becomes a policy, which is what it is meant to be”, he said.

Mr Netanyahu also condemned comments by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, describing her charge that Israel carries out extrajudicial killings and uses disproportionate force against Palestinians as “scandalous”.

Israeli officials privately accept that the violence is likely to continue. Opposition politicians, intellectuals and retired military commanders are issuing increasingly strident warnings that never-ending violence awaits if Israel continues to occupy millions of angry Palestinians who can not vote in its national elections.

“The citizens of Israel have to deal with terrorism that receives support from irresponsible and false statements like that”, Netanyahu said.

On November 17, 2014, A Palestinian bus driver was found hanged to death inside a bus at a stop for the Israeli transport company Egged in West Jerusalem, amid conflicting reports the man was deliberately killed by Israeli fanatics.