New Hope rejects Palestinian statehood, has a goal of annexing settlements, but would uphold Israel’s pledge to suspend such sovereignty, party leader Gideon Sa’ar told the Washington Institute.
“I would say I support the maximum autonomy for the Palestinians to rule their lives, with the minimum ability to harm the state of Israel,” Sa’ar said. “That would be the formula”
He explained this right-wing position in English to the institute’s CEO, Robert Satloff, late Wednesday. The dismissal of Palestinian statehood, he said, was in part the consequence of failed peace attempts at Camp David, the Obama administration’s initiatives, and the 2005 Gaza withdrawal.
It is not clear that such a Palestinian state is even viable, Sa’ar said, particularly given the division between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in Judea and Samaria.
Sa’ar alluded vaguely to a regional component on a solution of autonomy for the Palestinians that included Jordan and Egypt, but did not clarify what he meant.
Such a conversation should also take place with the US, he said, adding that while the Biden administration supports the two-state solution, it is also much more realistic as to what it can achieve on the ground in the short term.
Sa’ar emphasized his support for the application of sovereignty over West Bank settlements, stating that this “is something that continues to be an Israeli objective.” He clarified that only Israeli areas should be annexed, and that areas populated by Palestinians in the West Bank would not be part of sovereign Israel.
“I would like to promote to work on adding more states to the normalization process with Israel,” Sa’ar said, adding that the old “Arab-Israeli conflict” is on the way to reducing itself to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The region wants to move forward with cooperative ties with Israel, and this will also be an important tool to achieving peace with the Palestinians, he said.
Sa’ar has been persistently outspoken against the support by the EU and many of its member states for illegal Palestinian building in Area C.
Sa’ar also took issue with European funding for NGOs perceived to be anti-Israel. He spoke specially about the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, which recently declared Israel to be an apartheid state.
