Netanyahu rules out Palestinian statehood, calling it ‘suicide’ for Israel

Israeli prime minister calls for Palestinian self-rule without statehood.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday laid out a general framework for his vision for peace in the Middle East and the future of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority after the ongoing war with Hamas is concluded.

Netanyahu led an Israeli delegation to the White House Monday for a dinner meeting with President Donald Trump and other senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

During the dinner, Trump and Netanyahu answered questions posed by reporters, including regarding the prospects for peace and the possibility of Palestinian statehood, amid efforts by France and Saudi Arabia to promote support for unilateral statehood at the United Nations this month.

The Israeli premier ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state, while expressing support for some form of Palestinian self-governance.

“I think the Palestinians should have all the power to govern themselves, but none of the powers to threaten us,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel would never agree to Palestinian statehood, calling such a move “suicide.”

“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 won’t commit suicide.”

“After October 7th, people said that the Palestinians have a state – a Hamas state in Gaza – and look what they did with it. They didn’t build it up, they built down to bunkers and to terror tunnels, after which they massacred our people, raped our women, beheaded our men, and invaded our cities and towns and kibbutzim and did horrendous, horrendous massacres, the kind we didn’t see since World War II and the Nazis in the Holocaust.”

“So people aren’t likely to say ‘Let’s just give them another state and it will be a platform for destroying Israel.’ We will work out a peace with our Palestinian neighbors – those who don’t want to destroy us, and we’ll work out a peace where our security, the sovereign power of security, always remains in our hands.”

“Now people will say ‘That is not a complete state, it is not a state, it is not that.’ We don’t care. We vowed ‘Never again.’ Never again is now.”

Alluding to efforts by the U.S. and Israel to bring additional countries into the Abraham Accords, including Syria, Netanyahu expressed optimism regarding the possibility of achieving a “very broad peace” between Israel and the Arab and Muslim world.

“I think we can work out a peace between us and the entire Middle East under President Trump’s leadership and working together, I think we can establish a very broad peace that will include all our neighbors.”