[Jpost] Uri Ariel says talks on Palestinian statehood are in their "dying throes" and predicts spiraling of Jewish settler population.The longer the Palestinians wait to make peace the less land they will eventually get. Tick-tock.
"I think that in five years there will be 550,000 or 600,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria, rather than 400,000 (now)," the minister said.
Ariel put the number of Israelis in east Jerusalem at between 300,000 and 350,000. Some 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas which, along with the Gaza Strip, Israel captured in 1967.
Hosting US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Jerusalem on Friday, Netanyahu put the onus for the deadlock on Abbas.
"One of the things we have found, unfortunately, is that our Palestinian neighbors are moving ahead in a pact with Hamas. The United States has designated Hamas rightly as a terrorist organization," he said.
"I think the Palestinians have to make a simple choice - a pact with Hamas, or peace with Israel. But they cannot have both."