Netanyahu Admitted That For 30 Years He Blocked The Creation Of A Palestinian State

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called "truth" all the accusations in recent years that he is not working for the Middle East peace process and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by creating a separate, Palestinian state.

At a press conference, asked why he had not withdrawn from the Oslo Accords that laid the foundations for it, given that he continued to criticize them, Netanyahu said: "I inherited the Oslo Accords. The decision to bring the Palestine Liberation Organization from Tunisia and place it at the heart of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza, was a decision made and implemented before I became prime minister. I thought it was a terrible mistake, and I still think so." (The quote is from The Times of Israel).

The agreements (the first being from 1993) made the PLO the representative of the Palestinian people, gave some control to a newly created Palestinian Authority over the West Bank and Gaza, and laid the foundations for a process that could eventually evolve into a sovereign Palestinian state.

Netanyahu was in power for most of this period: from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 until now, with a break of a year and a half. A frequent criticism of him is that even when he did not reject the peace process, he did his best to sabotage it.

"You and your journalist friends have been accusing me for almost 30 years of stopping the Oslo accords and obstructing the Palestinian state. That's true," Netanyahu said. "I am proud that I prevented the creation of a Palestinian state, because today everyone understands what that Palestinian state could have been after we saw the small Palestinian state in Gaza," he continued. "Everyone understands what would have happened if we...