JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state for the first time Sunday, reversing himself in the face of U.S. pressure but attaching conditions like demilitarization that the Palestinians swiftly rejected.
A week after President Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world, Netanyahu said the Palestinian state would have to be unarmed and recognize Israel as the Jewish state — a condition amounting to Palestinians giving up the goal of returning to Israel.
The West Bank-based Palestinian government dismissed the proposal as an attempt to determine the outcome of negotiations while maintaining Israeli settlements, refusing compromise over Jerusalem and ignoring the issue of borders. They also said that demilitarization would solidify Israeli control over them.
Netanyahu, in an address seen as his response to Obama, refused to heed the U.S. call for an immediate freeze of construction on lands Palestinians claim for their future state. He also said Jerusalem must remain under Israeli sovereignty.
"Netanyahu’s speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations,” senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said. "We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term ‘Palestinian state’ because he qualified it.”
The Palestinians demand all of the West Bank as part of a future state, with east Jerusalem as their capital. Israel captured both areas in the 1967 Mideast war.
by the associated press
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