Netanyahu vows to block Palestinian state as polls show his bloc short
Israeli premier's pledge comes as surveys put his coalition well below a Knesset majority ahead of Oct. 27 election
JERUSALEM (MNTV) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Saturday to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza or the occupied West Bank for as long as he remains in office, responding to an Israeli Arab party leader who said Palestine already exists.
“As long as I am prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state controlled by Iran, neither in Gaza nor in Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu said, using the biblical Israeli term for the occupied West Bank — and framing any future Palestinian state as an Iranian proxy, a characterization Palestinian leaders and much of the international community reject.
Most countries that recognize Palestinian statehood tie it to a two-state solution rather than to Iran.
His remarks answered Mansour Abbas, leader of the United Arab List (Ra’am), an Arab party in Israel’s parliament, who told the party’s conference in the Arab city of Tayibe that “the State of Palestine exists, and the world recognizes it,” and urged Washington and Israel to recognize it too.
More than 145 UN member states now recognize a Palestinian state, including several Western countries that did so over the past year.
Netanyahu’s pledge comes ahead of elections to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on Oct. 27, with polls consistently showing his Likud party and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies falling short of the 61 seats needed to govern.
Surveys through August have put the current coalition at roughly 48 to 54 seats. Likud, which won 32 seats in 2022, has slipped in recent polling — one Friday survey put it at about 20 — and now often trails or runs even with the new party of Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief who has emerged as a leading challenger.
A Channel 13 poll on Aug. 19 projected Netanyahu’s bloc at 51 seats.
The opposition, however, has no assured path to power: it is divided, and several Jewish parties refuse to sit in government with Arab parties, whose seats would be needed to form a majority without Netanyahu.
That impasse has left Israeli politics deadlocked heading into the vote.
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