Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told visiting German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul in a meeting in Jerusalem on Thursday evening that “Hamas is not interested in reaching a deal” to release the remaining 50 hostages being held in Gaza.
“The main reason for this is that Hamas is receiving international support through the attacks against Israel,” Sa’ar said, according to a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry. “Hamas is holding the hostages and is not laying down its arms; it is entrenching itself in its refusal to accept the framework for the release of the hostages because it sees that the international community is giving it rewards and gifts.”
Sa’ar also addressed the growing international campaign to recognize a Palestinian state, saying, “We do not call these areas the ‘West Bank.’ We call them Judea and Samaria. In Europe today, they think that Jews can live in Berlin, London and Brussels, but that Jews cannot live a kilometer and a half from here. We believe that Jews have the right to live in the heart of their historical homeland. Even in Judea and Samaria.”
Several Western countries, including the United Kingdom, France and Canada, have in recent days announced their intentions to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Sa’ar said that historically, “there has never been a Palestinian state” and he slammed “illegal Palestinian construction in Area C” of Judea and Samaria, saying that “it cannot be ignored.”
Referring to the Palestinian Authority, he said, “It pays terrorists and terrorism and poisons the minds of the next generation, through wild incitement against the State of Israel in its education system, in mosques and in the media.”
If the P.A. had control over its borders and airspace, Sa’ar said, “we will find ourselves with a flow of Iranian weapons into the Land of Israel. This will not happen.”
Sa’ar concluded by saying that “a Palestinian state will not be established for the simple reason that Israel will not be able to forfeit its own security.”
Wadephul, who also held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the day, said in a statement issued shortly before he took off for Tel Aviv that talks on establishing a Palestinian state must begin immediately.
“A negotiated two-state solution remains the only path that can offer people on both sides a life in peace, security and dignity,” he said. “For Germany, the recognition of a Palestinian state comes more at the end of that process. But such a process must begin now.”
In response, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir accused Berlin of “supporting Nazism” by considering the recognition of a Palestinian state in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. “80 years since the Holocaust, and Germany is once again supporting Nazism,” Ben-Gvir posted on X.
