MIDDLE EAST

Netanyahu Comments Cast Doubt on Stance Toward Palestinians

By 
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a campaign statement Sunday, “There will be no withdrawals” from the occupied West Bank and “no concessions” to the Palestinians, renewing questions about his declared commitment to the two-state solution.
The statement issued by Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party came in response to a reporter’s query about whether the prime minister still stood by his 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University endorsing the concept of a Palestinian state, and ended, “This thing is simply not relevant.” But after the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Mr. Netanyahu had said the Bar-Ilan speech was no longer relevant, his office issued a late-night statement of its own saying, “The prime minister has never stated such a thing.”
The apparent contradictions between Mr. Netanyahu’s political and governmental apparatuses came as he is struggling to shore up support in his conservative base and win over voters in West Bank settlements before March 17 elections. It might have been more hairsplitting than actual disagreement: both statements cited the chaotic regional situation and said Israel would not cede territory for fear of takeover by Islamists.
Mr. Netanyahu, who is seeking a historic fourth term, was already fending off criticism from politicians further to the right after a report on Friday that his special envoy, Isaac Molho, agreed in secret talks with an adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority in 2013 to negotiate based on the lines that demarcated Israel before the 1967 war. Mr. Netanyahu’s office said that the document revealed in the report, by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, was never agreed to and that in any case it was only an American statement of principles on which Mr. Molho and Mr. Abbas would have been allowed to express reservations, something the American involved in the secret channel, Dennis B. Ross, confirmed.
Then on Saturday, a newsletter distributed in synagogues included a statement attributed to Likud saying that Mr. Netanyahu had declared the Bar-Ilan speech “null and void” and that his “entire political biography is a fight against the creation of a Palestinian state.” Likud officials said Sunday that that was the opinion of Tzipi Hotovely, the far-right Likud lawmaker who answered the newsletter’s questionnaire, not the party line.
The Palestinians, as well as many in Washington and Europe, have long said that Mr. Netanyahu’s policy toward Israeli settlements in occupied lands and stance in negotiations seem inconsistent with the principles he laid out at Bar-Ilan University.
“I think what he said tonight was stating the essence of his true policies — he was never a man of the two-state solution,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator.
“I hope his statements tonight will be an eye-opener” in Washington, Mr. Erekat added.
Mr. Netanyahu spoke at Bar-Ilan shortly after returning to the premiership in 2009, following a 10-year hiatus, when he was under intense pressure from President Obama to return to peace talks with the Palestinians and freeze settlement construction.
“In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side by side, in amity and mutual respect,” Mr. Netanyahu said back then.
If the Palestinians recognized Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, he added, “then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state.”
Mr. Abbas roundly refused Mr. Netanyahu’s demand for such recognition in the last round of American-brokered peace talks, which collapsed last April. The central council of his Palestine Liberation Organization just last week resolved “to reject all attempts to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”
It was unclear whether Sunday’s campaign statement was a significant shift in Mr. Netanyahu’s policy and ideology, or a more temporary assessment of the regional reality (and the Israeli political landscape, where Likud has been losing votes to the Jewish Home party, which opposes a Palestinian state).
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that in the situation that has been created in the Middle East, any area that will be cleared will be grabbed by radical Islam and the terror organizations supported by Iran,” Likud said on WhatsApp, the mobile group-messaging service, after reporters inquired about the statement in the synagogue newsletter. “Therefore, there will be no withdrawals and no concessions. This thing is simply not relevant.”
A spokesman for Likud said in an email that Mr. Netanyahu meant that “this discussion (about concessions/withdrawals) is simply irrelevant at the moment.”
A version of this article appears in print on March 9, 2015, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Netanyahu Comments Cast Doubt on Stance Toward Palestinians. Order Reprints|  Today's Paper|Subscribe