Trump and Netanyahu devour two-state solution at dinner table

President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu let the world know that any idea of creating an independent Palestinian State between Israel and Jordan (two-state solution) was dead and buried in an extraordinary few minutes before dinner was served at the White House on 7 July.
An unknown number of reporters had gathered in the dining room to engage in what turned out to be a thirty-minute question and answer session with Trump and Netanyahu - whilst about 12 of America and Israel’s top Cabinet officials, America’s Ambassador to Israel – Mike Huckabee, and Israel’s Ambassador to the US – Yechiel Leiter, sat patiently in their places waiting for dinner to be served.
Trump was asked the following question at the 12th minute:
Question:
Do you think that there can be a two-state solution that creates an independent Palestine?
Answer: President Trump
I don't know. I'd ask Bibi that question. You have the greatest man in the world to answer that age-old question, two-state. Go ahead. Give him your honest answer.
Answer: Netanyahu
I think Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves, but none of the powers to threaten us, and that means that certain powers like overall security will always remain in our hands. Now that is a fact and no one in Israel will agree to anything else because we don't commit suicide. We want life, we cherish life for ourselves, for our neighbors, and I think we can work out a peace between us and the entire Middle East with President Trump's leadership. And by working together, I think we can establish a very, very broad peace that will include all our neighbors.
Netanyahu took the opportunity to supplement his above answer in the 15th minute with this blistering condemnation:
After October 7th, people said the Palestinians had a state, a Hamas state in Gaza and look what they did with it. They didn't build it up. They built down into bunkers, into terror tunnels, after which they massacred our people, raped our women, beheaded our men, invaded our cities and our towns and our kibbutzim, and did horrendous, horrendous massacres, the kind of which we didn't see since World War II and the Nazis, the Holocaust. So people aren't likely to say, "Let's just give them another state." It'll be a platform to destroying Israel.
We'll work out a peace with our Palestinian neighbors, those who don't want to destroy us, and we'll work out a peace in which our security, the sovereign power of security always remains in our hands. Now, people will say, "It's not a complete state. It's not a state. It's not that." We don't care. We vowed never again. Never again is now. It's not going to happen again.
Trump’s silence after Netanyahu’s above comments reinforced Trump’s statement on 30 April 2024:
“There was a time when I thought two states could work. Now I think two states is going to be very, very tough. I think it’s going to be much tougher to get”
Israel’s Knesset had declared its opposition to any two-state solution on 18 July 2024
The two-state solutions embodied in United Nations Security Council Resolutions 2334 (2016) and 2735 (2024) – are now empty words incapable of enforcement.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been left stranded pursuing both of these Security Council resolutions whilst deliberately failing to acknowledge the existence of an alternative solution: The 2020 Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (HKOPS) authored by Ali Shihabi - an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN failed to report Netanyahu’s historic White House Declaration. Each needs to explain why.
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David Singer is an Australian lawyer and political analyst.