Israeli Press
Maariv reports Mansour Abbas declares Palestine exists and Eisenkot rules it out
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
The Newsdesk gathers reporting from wire services and primary sources and rewrites every story in-house before publication. How our journalism is made →
Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra'am, told his party's convention that a Palestinian state already exists, and two of the men who want to lead the next Israeli government answered him within hours.
"We recognise the Palestinian state, and the Palestinian state exists, and the entire world recognises it," Abbas said, calling on the United States and Israel to do the same and describing Palestinian citizens of Israel as a bridge between the two peoples. The Israeli daily Maariv carried the exchange in a report by Anna Barsky.
Gadi Eisenkot, whose Yashar list leads much of the opposition polling, replied that there is no Palestinian state and that in a government he forms there will not be one. Benjamin Netanyahu said no Palestinian state would be established under his leadership.
Bezalel Smotrich pressed Eisenkot from the other side, demanding he commit to building in E1, the corridor between Ma'ale Adumim and Jerusalem whose tender Israel opened this month.
Barsky reported that Ra'am is signalling a willingness to return to a governing coalition and that Eisenkot would not commit to including it.
The arithmetic under the argument has not moved. Neither bloc has reached sixty-one seats without the Arab lists, and the leaders of both keep saying they will not sit with them.
%20(cropped).jpg?width=640)
