By Palestine Chronicle Staff 
The Israeli government officialized on Sunday its opposition to the recognition of a Palestinian state, Reuters news agency reported.
According to Reuters, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought the “declaratory decision” to a vote, and the cabinet unanimously approved the measure.
Netanyahu reportedly said, ahead of the cabinet meeting on Sunday, that the move comes after “recent talk in the international community about an attempt to unilaterally impose on Israel a Palestinian state.”
“Israel categorically rejects international diktats around a permanent settlement with the Palestinians,” the government’s decision read, according to the Israeli newspaper, The Times of Israel.
Listen to Netanyahu’s statement from today.
It’s final – Netanyahu and his cabinet says NO to a Palestinian state, unless approved by Israel.
It’s a smack in the face for Biden and other world leaders who had been peddling the “2 state solution”. pic.twitter.com/KjRjixFdBd
— Khalissee (@Kahlissee) February 18, 2024
“Israel will continue to oppose a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state,” the government’s decision said, calling such a move as a “massive, unprecedented reward to terror”.
In recent weeks, the United States and other Western leaders have emphasized the need to recognize a Palestinian state as the only long-term solution to the war.
Israeli officials, however, have vehemently rejected this idea.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 28,985 Palestinians have been killed, and 68,883 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Now that the *entire cabinet* of Netanyahu’s regime has rejected a Palestinian state, it’s crystal clear that the ‘mainstream’ of Israeli politics refuses to accept a Palestinian state.
This means that any Western politician who claims to support the two-state solution, but who… pic.twitter.com/n04sxEIFZf
— Dimitri Lascaris (@dimitrilascaris) February 18, 2024
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
