WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. State Department released three statements from its Middle East envoy emphatically affirming support for Palestinian statehood.
The statements, broadcast in video-clips posted Friday on the State Department’s website, are extracted from George Mitchell’s visit last week to Israel and the Palestinian areas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government has refused to commit to a two-state outcome.
Three times Mitchell emphasizes that the two state outcome is central to U.S. peace brokering efforts in the region. “Policy of the United States under President Obama is clear,” Mitchell says in one clip, flanked by U.S. and Israeli flags. “Beyond any doubt it is in the United States’ national interest that there be a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East which would include settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a two-state solution involving a Palestinian state living side by side alongside the Jewish state of Israel in peace and hopefully stability and prosperity."
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