CMEP Bulletin: US Supports Two State Solution – May Agree to UNSC Resolution

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party was the decisive winner in Tuesday’s Israeli elections. It is expected that President Rivlin will ask Netanyahu, whose party won the most seats in the election, to begin the weeks long process of forming a governing coalition consisting of the majority of seats in the Knesset.

One day before the elections, during an interview with a Hebrew news website, Netanyahu said that if reelected he would never establish a Palestinian state. He also stated that if the Zionist Union were to win the election it would do the bidding of the international community, “including freezing construction in West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, and cooperate with international initiatives to return Israel’s borders to the 1967 lines.”

According to the Wednesday New York Times administration officials said, “The Obama administration may now agree to passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution embodying principles of a two-state solution that would be based on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip and mutually agreed swaps.” That same day White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters, “It has been the policy of the United States for more than 20 years that a two-state solution is the goal of resolving the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinian people. That has been the policy of the United States under both Democratic and Republican Presidents. In the context of the recent election, Prime Minister Netanyahu indicated a change in his position. And based on those comments … the United States will reevaluate our position and the path forward in the situation.”

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