Israel’s ambassador to Britain rejects 2-state solution

LONDON

Israel’s ambassador to the UK ruled out the possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an interview with Sky News on Wednesday.

"I think it's about time for the world to realize the Oslo paradigm failed on Oct. 7 and we need to build a new one," said Tzipi Hotovely, referring to the day the Palestinian group Hamas launched a cross-border attack against Israel.

"Israel knows today and the world should know now that the reason the Oslo accords failed was because the Palestinians never wanted to have a state next to Israel, they want to have a state from the river to the sea," she added.

Hotovely asked the interviewer, Mark Austin, why he was "obsessed" with the two-state solution after he asked her whether it was dead.

Asked for her thoughts on US President Joe Biden’s remarks that Israel is losing support over its “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza, she said "Americans were fighting ISIS in Mosul, (Iraq). You had much more people that got killed in Mosul proportionally than the people in Gaza."

Hotovely added that Israel is "doing everything to prevent casualties."

She also pointed out the need for addressing the education issue in Gaza and said UN schools are "becoming terror schools."

Asked whether by reeducation she means like the China model, she rejected it, adding: "You're not learning from your own history," noting that Japan and Germany "turned out to be good Western countries" after World War II.

In interviews with Sky News in October, Hotovely failed to admit there was a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying Israel is not bombing civilians in the besieged enclave.

Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip from the air and land, imposed a siege and mounted a ground offensive in retaliation for a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.

At least 18,608 Palestinians have since been killed and almost 50,600 others injured in Israeli attacks, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

The Israeli death toll in the Hamas attack stands at 1,200, while around 139 hostages remain in captivity, according to official figures.