Florida Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, during an interview with CNN, expressed his opposition to a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip.
CNN's Jake Tapper mentioned President Biden's a new oped this week that calls for a two-state solution ultimately. "Even before the October 7th attacks, you have cast doubt on President Biden’s calls for a two-state solution", Tapper said, "How do you think this should end then for the Palestinians? Do you think Israel should occupy the Gaza Strip? What's your view what comes after Hamas is defeated?"
“I think the fatal flaw with a push for a so-called two-state solution is that the Palestinian Arabs have never embraced Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State", DeSantis answered, "I mean that ultimately when Israel has made offers in the past - that was the sticking point. And so, you don’t want a two-state [solution] that ends up just being a stepping stone to the destruction of Israel…...Now going forward, I think Israel needs to do what is best to defend themselves. I would note Gaza was not under Israeli occupation. They pulled out in 2005. They uprooted thousands of their own Israeli citizens and forced them to leave the Gaza Strip. And the idea was to give the Arabs down there an opportunity to make something of it. And unfortunately, they turned to Hamas and Hamas used money to build a big terrorist infrastructure and ultimately waged attacks for many years and then the devastating October 7th attack. Israel cannot allow history to repeat itself".
"I think that it would end up becoming a hotbed of terrorism," DeSantis stated.
"We need to let Israel win this war. We should support them publicly and privately to actually finish the job," he added.
The Governor explained: "If you just do some glancing blows, Hamas reconstitutes itself, we're going to end up in this same cycle going forward. And Israel is in a situation where they suffered the biggest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. You have an organization in Hamas that wants to wipe Israel off the map. This is not some minor dispute; this is an existential threat to the survival of the world's only Jewish state.
So I think they have to do whatever they can to protect their people and to make sure that this never happens again," he concluded.