Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has described the Israeli prime minister’s pledge that he will not agree to the creation of an independent Palestinian state as alarming, The Guardian reported Friday.
Clegg said that it may lead a future British government to formally recognize Palestinian sovereignty.
Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party surged to victory in Tuesday’s national election in Israel, after he abandoned a prior commitment to an independent Palestinian state and warned the electorate that Arab citizens would vote “in droves”, apparently to attract last-minute support among conservatives.
While David Cameron tweeted his congratulations to the Israeli prime minister, Barack Obama expressed concern about Netanyahu’s divisive rhetoric.
“I actually share president Obama’s views much more than David Cameron’s,” Clegg said.
“It is extremely worrying – it cannot be more alarming – to have seen Binyamin Netanyahu do something which no leading Israeli politician has ever done – to rule out the prospect of a two-state solution,” he added.
Clegg said he hoped Netanyahu’s comments had been “breathless rhetoric which he is now going to row back from”, but that if the Israeli prime minister continued to rule out a two-state solution and expand illegal settlements “the world, including the British parliament, would have no option, inevitably, but to recognise a Palestinian state”.