Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday he told US President Joe Biden that he rejected Palestinian sovereignty in the Gaza Strip, in a call the day before.
The two leaders spoke by phone on Friday for the first time in nearly a month, with Biden saying following the call that he believed it was still possible Netanyahu could agree to some form of Palestinian state.
“In his conversation with President Biden, Netanyahu reiterated his policy that after Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement issued on Saturday. On Thursday, Netanyahu had rejected Palestinian sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, saying it was incompatible with Israel’s need to have “security control over all the territory west of the (River) Jordan.”
Biden had said after the call on Friday that it was possible Netanyahu could come round to some form of two-state solution, seen for decades by diplomats as the best way to bring peace to the Middle East. “There are a number of types of two-state solutions. There’s a number of countries that are members of the UN that… don’t have their own militaries,” Biden told reporters after an event at the White House.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported that at least 142 more Palestinians were killed and 278 others wounded by Israeli attacks on Gaza in the 24 hours, Al Jazeera reported. Potable water is also growing scarcer in the territory as the World Health Organisation has described the living conditions as “inhumane”, which is spreading disease including hepatitis A.
The UNOCHA also confirmed that the Israeli forces destroyed Israa University in Gaza City, after they used the campus for more than two months as a base and “an ad hoc detention facility for interrogating Palestinian detainees before their transfer to an unknown location”.
Meanwhile, the Non-Aligned Movement has agreed on “support for Palestine” amid the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza, Indonesia’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pahala Mansury said Saturday.
Members of the NAM, a forum of 120 developing states that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc, had discussed and agreed on several points related to Israel’s ongoing aggression on the besieged enclave, Mansury said while talking to Al Jazeera during the 19th Summit of the NAM in Kampala.—Agencies
