Touching on next week’s visit of US President, Barack Obama, MK Tzipi Livni, speaking at the 13th annual Herzliya Conference said it was a “wonderful opportunity for the new government of the State of Israel … to create that crucial dialogue between Israel and the United states. We have to create that anew … I believe that next week there’s going to be a new opportunity to create a dialogue on a matter of principles and to mold a mutual understanding that these are Israel’s interests.”

She said that while everyone was talking about this visit being a one-off event, “let’s not forget this is a global village … even when he is there, there are various channels of communications.”

Opening the panel on “Is the Israeli-Palestinian impasse breakable?” Livni dedicated much of her address to stressing the need for “two states for two peoples,” explaining that it is “critical for us to reach a final status agreement” with the Palestinians. It has “Been an open wound since 1867 … has to be healed … Having two states for two nations is the most basic and only interest of the Jewish people.” It’s the “only way we can preserve the existence of a democratic Jewish state.”

She said “there are only two options between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan, or two separate states or one state … just as the Palestinians need to know that there are Jews between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, we need to know that there are Palestinians in the same place.”

Livni said, “In the negotiation room we need to stop talking about who has the greater right to be here … We have to see how we can create more than just a shared life … we need to see whether we can live together, even though I don’t want to live together, I want a divorce.”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)