Moshe Ya'alon
Moshe Ya'alonKobi Richter/TPS

Former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, who is running for the Knesset as part of the Blue and White list, told Israel Hayom and i24NEWS on Sunday night that he intends to avoid a binational state at all costs but will ensure that not a single Jew is uprooted from Judea and Samaria.

“On the one hand, we need to not delude ourselves into thinking we can have peace now, it is irrational,” Ya’alon said, adding that at the same time “we must not annex territories in a way where we create a binational state, another irrational position.”

“We are in the middle,” he said, appearing to oppose both a one-state and a two-state solution.

Whilst dispelling the existence of a partner on the Palestinian side willing to “recognize [Israel’s] right to live as a Jewish state in Tel Aviv,” he expressed support for the Palestinians “political autonomy.”

At the same time and above everything else, he said that any political arrangement would ensure that “not a single Jew was uprooted” from communities in Judea and Samaria.

“Israel can manage with very big sticks and carrots,” Ya’alon told the i24NEWS-Israel Hayom election special, implying a maintenance of the status quo with Israel’s security interests at its very core.

He added that it is Israel’s “right” to “settle every part of the land of Israel.”

“I am considered hawkish when it comes to security but I do care about the Jewish and democratic values of the country so I believe we can create a coalition from the rational right to the Zionist left,” Ya’alon said.

Pressed on whether he would sit in a coalition with Arab parties, he said it was a matter of “manipulation” and with a focus towards forming a “blocking cluster against Netanyahu.”

At the same time, Ya’alon clarified that he would not cooperate with Arab parties “that are not Zionists.”

“Our first phone call after winning the election will be to the Likud party without Netanyahu,” Ya’alon said, adding, “I am ready to go back to the Likud party of 2009-2013, something happened after 2015 elections because of Netanyahu...incitement against the judicial system, against the attorney general, the head of intelligence” as well as deeper divides that have emerged between “right and left.”