Israel's Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked potentially threw the medium-to-long-term future of the coalition government into doubt Sunday, when she ruled that her party, Yamina, would never acknowledging or working toward a Palestinian state.
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Shaked was responding to Foreign Minister and PM-designate Yair Lapid, who in an interview last week on KAN 11 News television station, said that a "two-state resolution could be advanced when the government rotates in two years' time."
At the same time, he acknowledged that nothing could even be discussed, as Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's political faction does not support such a move.
"There will not be a Palestinian state in a government that we [Yamina] are party to," said Shaked.
The issue of the two-state question has reportedly arisen ahead of Bennett's upcoming Washington, DC meeting – his first – with US President Joe Biden.
There are some concerns that Biden, fresh from the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan for which he has personally received heavy criticism, could try and force concessions from Israel's still green prime minister.
However, Shaked mused that the meeting would likely concentrate more on the infinitely more pressing regional issue of Iran, as well as the response to COVID-19.
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For his part, Biden has not proposed potential resolutions to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, although historically he has favored a return to the 1949 Armistice lines. During the May conflict between Hamas and Israel, Biden was initially supportive of the Israel Defense Forces' response to thousands of Islamist rockets.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
