Sanders aide calls Lapid’s support for two-state solution a ‘farce’

Responding to an interview in which Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid mapped out his vision for a two-state solution, US Senator Bernie Sanders’s foreign policy adviser Matt Duss tweets that unless the Israeli lawmaker is prepared to walk back previous positions taken on the matter, his backing is mere lip service.

The Foreign Policy article quotes Lapid saying, “We need two states because a new Palestinian leadership will rise up and come to Israel and demand, not a state— but voting rights… What will we do? Tell them no, and we’re no longer a democracy. Tell them yes, and we’re no longer a Jewish state. … You can’t tell the Americans… that you don’t agree to the principle of one person, one vote. There is no way to explain it in the US. In this sense, Netanyahu is leading us to disaster.”

To this, Duss tweets, “Unless Lapid is prepared to walk back his previously stated requirements for a Palestinian state, his support for 2 states is a farce.”

He then linked to an interview from 2019 in which Lapid said he would only agree to a two-state solution in which Jerusalem remained undivided and entirely under Israeli control, in which there would be no right of return for Palestinians to Israel, in which the Jordan Valley would remain Israel’s eastern security border and in which “Israeli security [would] stay in Israeli hands,” with the army allowed to enter Palestinian territory if it is aware of terrorists planning attacks against Israelis.

Unless Lapid is prepared to walk back his previously stated requirements for a Palestinian state, his support for 2 states is a farce. https://t.co/W2UkbL99Ya https://t.co/207n5DfY8a

— Matt Duss (@mattduss) March 9, 2021