More and more, members of Israel’s ruling parties are matching their public statements to the reality they are implementing every minute on the ground: Israel’s opposition to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict.

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"Economy Minister and Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett is the latest MK to join a robust list of Israeli government coalition members who have publicly stated that the two-state solution is dead and that the notion of a Palestinian state is a thing of the past. Although it’s no new position for him, Bennett is making it clear that no matter what Prime Minister Netanyahu says or what polls show, the Israel of 2013 is squarely against a two-state solution.

Bennett stated that ”the idea of forming a Palestinian state in Israel has reached a dead end,” speaking at a settler council meeting Monday morning, comparing the “Palestinian problem” to a “piece of shrapnel” lodged in someone’s rear end; that instead of trying to live with such a pain in the ass, it must be surgically removed.

Bennett also asserted there is no occupation, since Israeli Jews cannot be occupiers in their own home (echoing the Netanyahu-commissioned Levy Report from nearly a year ago that concluded there is no occupation) and called on Israel to annex Area C of the West Bank. This is similar to what Likud MK and former Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin said last year: “Today, almost 20 years since Oslo, one could clearly argue that the idea of separating between the nations has failed … Between the Jordan River and the sea, there can only be one state, Jewish and democratic, with a solid Jewish majority.”

There are plenty of other coalition members who have publicly come out against the two-state solution and the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, as a Knesset committee meeting on the subject exposed last month. It’s not just fundamentalist Hebron settler Orit Struck from Jewish Home, who said two states are ”not part of the government’s guiding principles, and for good reason.”

http://972mag.com/one-by-one-israels-coalition-members-abandon-two-state-rhetoric/73829/