00:00Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke tonight and declared that a
00:04Palestinian state in Gaza will not happen. We can cross now to our correspondent in Jerusalem,
00:10Noga Ternopolsky. Noga, can you tell us more about what Netanyahu had to say this evening?
00:16Yes, it was a rare press conference by the Prime Minister, and he was defiant as always. The
00:24Prime Minister said there will never be a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip. He always
00:30says that there will never be a Palestinian state in the West Bank, so that covers all Palestinian
00:35territories. He said that Israel would move ahead with this crucial opening of the Rafah border
00:44crossing that's already been announced by Palestinian authorities and confirmed by the
00:49United States. But he said that Israel had agreed to this only on the condition that Israel was the
00:56security force that would check everybody and everything going in and out. It's not clear that
01:02that actually will happen or can happen. He did not talk about redeploying Israeli troops to the
01:09perimeter of the Gaza Strip, which is necessary for the completion of phase two. Instead, he said that
01:16there will be no Gaza reconstruction. Remember, this comes less than a week after the president's
01:23son-in-law, Jared Kushner, gave a big presentation at the Davos World Economic Forum, really presenting
01:30Gaza as basically a real estate opportunity on the model of suburban America. The Prime Minister of
01:36Israel said there will be no reconstruction, full stop, until Gaza is fully demilitarized and Hamas has
01:43laid down its arms. He did not address the question of which groups, which bodies or which forces
01:51Israel may allow into Gaza in order to accomplish that. Instead, he said there will be no Turkish
01:58forces, there will be no Qatari forces. It was a big list of no's, much as Netanyahu has become known
02:05for when regarding international demands for Gaza. And he even went so far as to criticize Saudi Arabia,
02:14a country that he very much wants to normalize ties with Israel. He criticized Saudi Arabia for
02:21making its ties closer, coming closer to Turkey and to Qatar. I could go on and on, but it was a very
02:30defined and it was a very suddenly organized press conference this evening.
02:33Okay, we'll have to leave it there. Noga Tornopolski, our correspondent in Jerusalem. Noga,
02:38thanks for the update.
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